


everything the light touches (and all the shadows too)

by PATCHESDREAM



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Attempt at Humor, Blood Vines | The Crimson | The Egg, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dream Smp, Gen, George Lore, George Villain Arc, Happy Ending, Humor, IRL Minecraft, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Manipulative Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Manipulative George, Mentions of Death, Minecraft, Multi, No Smut, Past Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, Toxic Relationships, Villain George, War, Weird lore, a little bit overdramatic sometimes, as in im talking the feral boys saying "boxed like a fish", but sometimes, dnf is very minor, george is a forest god, i'll put graphic but only bcs i dont know, idk i don't think the violence is very bad, if george got involved in the lore this is what i want, like relationships are not the main focus here, mentions of scars, morally grey george, ok, or george kind of thinks it, people call other people crazy quite a lot, realistic dialogue, roleplay characters, shipping roleplay characters, well it's kinda happy, which idk if that's a tw so pls be careful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 40,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PATCHESDREAM/pseuds/PATCHESDREAM
Summary: “You’re like the moon,” Dream said once, he meant because he only came out at night, nocturnal, but George knows he is like the moon because he has two faces, one smiling and full of light, the other in shadow, dark, with the possibility to block out the whole sun.He nods and smiles, and regards the pieces. He has to make a move now. He has spent too long deliberating, making small changes to the placement of his pawns but not moving the important pieces. He has spent to long on the board and not above it.Dream once told him a promise, a genuine thing that shone in the dawn of a new day. "Everything the light touches is our kingdom."Perspective. Whatever the cost, he must hold this power, must save this land that he has been a part of since the creation of things. Everything the light touches… and all the shadows too.He frees Dream from prison, begins his deadly game of manipulation, and chaos will come again. The god of the forest will have his world back for good.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & GeorgeNotFound & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Niki | Nihachu
Comments: 27
Kudos: 83





	1. LARK'S DAWN

**Author's Note:**

> minor trigger warnings for: death, scars, possibly (?) abliest language such as "mad" and "crazy", descriptions of blood and wounds (not in depth), fantasy style violence mentioned (swords, canon deaths), and manipulative/unhealthy relationships (platonic and romantic) (some of which have hopeful/open endings)
> 
> hope you enjoy! this is my first ever dream smp fic :)

**CHAPTER ONE**

It’s overcast, the sky heavy, billowing and bellowing with harsh gusts of coasting winds coming from the sea, carrying the salty taste of the old l’Manberg docks, still hanging on with solid tenacity to the cracked rocks of the cliffs, new wood already slimy with seaweed and barnacles.

George sits on a hill, squatting in the grass which ripples and whispers around him, large, heavy flowers knocking together and spilling their cups of water from the last night’s rain. A pre-noon sun glimmers and glints off the dewy undergrowth and thick, waxy leaves, the low hum of the bees drying off their massive transparent wings come from the trunks, the sound of thick honey dribbling and pattering on the leaf floor. The last larks of dawn still soaring and singing in the breeze.

From here, George can see the long wooden planks of the Prime Path, winding in and out of the hills, shining still with puddles and rain. In some places the path is cracked, the dark earth beneath marring the false-idyllic nature of a small road betwixt trees and low hills, and in others it is patched up with a pale wood, a mismatched quilt, like the invisible (and startlingly visible, striking) boundaries and borders crawling up the contours of George’s memory. There, someone declared independence, and there, and there, he did too, once, churlish and stupidly angry about losing a kingship he never wanted (his mind ticking over, measuring every word with glittering eyes “just tell me you hate me” hissed past a suppressed smirk).

Still, he remembers Dream standing beside him, Sapnap whining, as they watched from the peak of a cliff, the roving ants of the first faction of l’Manberg scuttling between van, tree, and walls as they made great proclamations and shouted, and broke the peace, the tranquillity, that had once been their home.

_Everything the light touches_ , he reminds himself,  _all of that is yours_ . He reminds himself every time the sun rises, remembers that promise, and does not let it go.

There’s a few problems to work out, people to see, people to crack out of high-security prisons, arguments to sooth over, borders to gently overlap with a soft hand and a blanket and a dagger concealed behind his back. Old friends to reunite with, lament over lost peace, lost land, lost friends,  _loss_ . New friends to inspire, to goad, slip quietly into their lives with a big smile, a lack of care, and an apparent disinterest in anything that doesn’t amuse him.

And chaos will come again.

George gets to his feet, the sun now shines a light on everything, hardly a shadow. He makes a promise to make those his as well, to curb the dark to his heel, to keep it sweet, to remind it that it is only the absence of him, of the light.

Everything the light touches… and all the shadows too.

He has no purple axe any more, no heavy armour. He is gentle, free as a bird, no threat. Just a boy with an iron helm and a rusty sword, the relic of a time before countries and wars and killing, he is one of the Children of Eden, with a scattered few who scurry like gutter rats in the night, remembering when this city was theirs, going to a house in a lake to sigh and smooth eroded red bricks, repaired too many times for a home that has seen no war, for a home built by few and destroyed by many. He sees them sometimes, nods, because they too have been cast aside, and they too, he knows, yearn for a time when there was only a wooden path for no people, and a large house for few, and little gardens and terraces and massive trees that towered on the skyline.

The faint brine of the wind reminds him of his ordeal today, and he slips over the path like a shadow, crossing immediately into the dull shade of the forest on the other side, worming his way between buildings, and round the back of random structures, finding chests with odd bits and bobs lying at the bottom, forgotten, buttons and signs and broken blocks, random stepping stones over shallow water, he thinks he remembers the object of today placing these. 

He feels old. He feels small. He feels afraid. Sliding between the shade of the trees like a wraith, dappled light shining off his imaginary crown.

He stops for a moment, scrabbles in the earth, and retrieves a pickaxe. It shines bright purple, shimmering with some ethereal light, its surface as slick and polished as a gemstone, even with a years use the jewel is untarnished, unscratched. He turns it over in his hands for a moment, presses his forehead against the cool stone, flexes his calloused hands on the well-worn wood of the handle. Even for him, with scarred knuckles, thumbs rough with building and fighting and hard work at anvils, tough burns on his fingertips from blacksmithing (both for peace and war, his hands are worn), this work will be hard. A tough angle, deep water, lava, obsidian, mining fatigue.

He gets to his feet, conceals the head of the pickaxe with a rough-spun cloth, he doesn’t want to be seen with anything of this grade near Pandora’s. He’s tried once, jokingly, made himself seem like less of a threat by making a big deal out of breaking a single dark brick.

Lying low at the edge of the sand, concealed by leaves and thick tree trunks, George watches the prison. There are no visitors, no guards, the whole thing is locked down, you can’t get in or out so there’s no point leaving anyone in charge. In daylight, the water looks almost turquoise (Dream told him, a long time ago, it looks like a grey-blue to him), lapping warmly at the beach and the hard, sharp sides of the prison. Normally, the prison  is some dark monolith blocking out the stars as he dives in and out of the water  beneath them , smooth as a dolphin, hiding things in the sand at the bottom, worried that the clear water will reveal his machinations to any patrol that comes this way, being half scared to death by fish larger than his fist. Now the prison is less terrifying, massive but caught in the sunlight, almost picturesque. The pickaxe is his last item before he begins what he was told was impossible.

When he was fake planning his break-in (punctuated with long whines about how boring it would be to actually attempt) he managed to wheedle the coordinates of the cell out of Sapnap, confirmed by Sam who looked horrified that he knew (but also like he was glad it was only little George who knew, and no-one important) and then began to set up base below the prison, right below the cell. He has a little room beneath the seabed with brewing stands, pearls, a cow, a lot of water buckets, blocks, and other bits and bobs. 

He takes a deep breath, adjusting his pickaxe, wades out into the water, and sinks. Carefully he swims towards the shadowed underbelly of the prison, pulled down by his heavy tools.

No-one has ever attempted this before, which is good and bad for much the same reason. If there are any mistakes or flaws that hadn’t been spotted by Sam or Dream, then they won’t have been fixed yet (and George thinks that Dream must have at least planned for the eventuality that someone locked him in his own prison, and planned accordingly, leaving some chink in the armour) but if there are any traps or further protective seals, no-one has tried to get past them yet and so they are unknown to George.

He’s planned for almost everything, recalling every scrap he heard Dream mention in passing, every material he saw carried through the gates or held in the boxes outside when it was still being built, listened to everything Sapnap knows about the security.

He slides into the soul sand stream he set up a few days before, waiting to see if it would be detected, but it seems no-one is scanning the sea-floor beneath the prison, and he hid it with a mound of sand and underwater plants. He floats up to the surface, breathing easier in the oxygenated water, on his back, facing the bottom of the prison,  with both his fingertips and toes balancing like an overgrown spider on some underwater cave ceiling.

George drinks a little milk, giving him a few seconds of faster mining before the fatigue sets in once again with an echoing ring. His shoulders are already aching, and it’s difficult to get a good purchase on the underside of the prison, his toes slipping on the slimy rocks and bobbing in the bubbling water so he can’t get a good enough swing to start breaking into the rock.

A growl of frustration leaves in a swirl of bubbles. He leaves the pickaxe amongst the seaweed and shoots back to his little cave. He grabs some honey and leaves from a shelf and shoots back out into the warm currents.

The slight traction he gets from a mixture of leaves, wool, slime, and honey pressed to the smooth underside of the prison  in two messy footholds, after a long while tinkering, gives him the push of his needs to swing his axe more strongly (albeit through thick water, mining fatigue, and an awful position) and it finally feel like the axe is catching in the rock. He swings with more vigour, giving no heed to the pain in his arms or the odd breathing, or the strain on his legs. The plan is beginning to work.

-

That night, after hiding away all his little secrets below the sand, George dries himself off by a campfire, before picking his way back through the forest, mindful of the thick spiders’ webs and dark groaning creatures, until he finds himself back on the golden glow of the Prime Path.

He needs to be seen, needs to be inconspicuous. His famed sleeping habits help that, if people don’t know where he is they simply assume he’s sleeping (somewhere, everyone has secret bases now, even the nice people with nothing to hide, because, at some point, you’ll have to hide yourself).

George finds Quackity, Karl, and Sapnap lounging by the crater that was l’Manberg (how many times has that been said? How many times has this damned country been a crater?) watching the stars, and the moon, and passing around something that looks suspiciously contraband. 

“I should report you,” he calls through the soft night, “to… whoever’s in charge now.”

Karl giggles, a high and manic sound that echoes around the hole, reverberating up into the night sky. The crater makes everyone a bit like that, manic, even people who didn’t ever believe or follow the dream of l’Manberg, because it’s a Nothing where there should be a Something. There should be a ship woven out of hope here, flag waving in a wind that doesn’t exist, a wind born on a tidal wave of ideas and revolution and freedom. George wishes they could have found freedom in his way of life, where no-one was stopping them from having a drug truck, and no-one really cared what Tommy and Wilbur wanted to do. “Rules don’t matter any more,” says Karl breathlessly, flopping back down onto the earth, “there’s no-one to enforce them.”

“Maybe we should take the throne,” says George, sounding tired, sounding like he doesn’t really mean it, but his eyes glitter in the shadows.

Sapnap sighs, taking the blunt from Karl. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

But George isn’t listening to him, his dark obsidian eyes are fixed on the side of Quackity’s head as he sits down in the cool grass. He senses the whirring of his mind, his hunger for power thrusting its head back up, a lost leadership to Schlatt and George’s oversleeping (it just wasn’t time yet, the election was a scam, he didn’t want to play his cards yet, he didn’t have them all then). “ _El Rapids_ ,” whispers Quackity to the night-sky, voice woven from the webs of hope that disintegrated here, picking up those torn threads and spinning them anew, darkened with lust for power, but still burning hot and bright above the crater of dreams. A long lost song whispers out of the hollow dark  _“my l’Manberg, my --”_

A thousand glimmering stars wink back at George, sly and slick, a sickle moon beaming, insidiously dark on one face. “ _You’re like the moon_ ,” Dream said once, he meant because he only came out at night, nocturnal, but George knows he is like the moon because he has two faces, one smiling and full of light, the other in shadow, dark, with the possibility to block out the whole sun. 

“ _El Rapids,”_ says George, goading, enticing.

“We got in trouble last time,” says Karl.

But Sapnap suddenly switches faces,  his disinterest fading, his coin landing heads up like Quackity’s. “But there isn’t anyone to tell us off this time.”

Karl is still in the air, his faces switch  _heads to tails to heads_ .

“Even if there was someone to tell us off, why would we care?” George murmurs, speaking to the trio’s buckets of false bravado and bravery born of stupidity. “A page in the history books, Karl.” He entreats the sliver of Karl who always feels left out, abandoned by every regime and every symphony. A boy out of time.

“Come on, Karl, don’t be a pussy,” says Quackity, standing up suddenly, a derisive scowl pulling at the scars in the corners of his mouth, “let’s go assert our dominance.” He raises a fist in the air, like some caricature of a fabled hero or a revolutionary General. “We need posters, graffiti, a base of operations!”

George shakes off his tiredness, the aching of his limbs. 

“I’m not a pussy,” Karl says, standing up, falling heads.

“Neither,” says Sapnap, he helps George to his feet, forgetting their rivalry in his sudden enchantment with the idea of following Quackity into the breach of politics and war. “Sex havers aren’t pussies.”

“Wonderful slogan,” George says sarcastically.

Karl jumps on it gleefully. “Please can we have posters of  me , with that written underneath… in cursive.”

“You? You didn’t come up with it,” bickers Sapnap, even as he takes Karl’s hand in his.

George follows close behind, lost in their shadows, as Quackity leads them back to the Prime Path and towards Karl’s house, where there’s probably looms, dye, and parchment from their last attempt at taking power, enough for more propaganda banners, posters, and massive dirt letters floating in the sky. So he follows, picking his way carefully over a particularly eroded patch of wood as Sapnap tries to push him into the hole. Quackity complains that they aren’t taking this seriously. George tries not to point out that a slogan up for deliberation (and probably likely to pass) is ‘sex havers aren’t pussies’.

-

He works on the underneath of the prison for a whole week, tunnelling vertically up, his legs aching and arms burning, catching short one hour naps beneath the sand in his underwater den, or curled up by a campfire deep in the woods. He prowls the Prime Path at night, scouting out the ‘Sex Havers’ Council’, as they end up calling themselves, planting ideas, suggestions, letting Quackity do all the work and take all the credit. A whispered “TNT” there and a mumbled “battle” there, sowing ideas of chaos and destruction, that, if Dream were here, would have been discovered and squashed within days. 

But Dream isn’t here, no-one is. People run around with half-cocked plans, trying to make things work in this apocalyptic world where their dream was smashed again, an unfinished symphony forever unfinished. George takes Dream’s strings that he left here, slack, once he was taken off to prison, learns the dances of the puppets, finds Dream’s music box and switches the tune. 

The promise of war he sows them is a lie, as is every word he lets slip between pale lips. 

“Soon,” he says to the SHC, “soon we’ll be in charge.” Then he does a goofy little giggle and grins big, like he doesn’t really believe it, like this is all just a joke. It makes Quackity mad, makes him bad. Makes him want more and more.

They start recruiting that week, signs spring up all down the Prime Path, symbols in every building, a blue circle with a red ‘Q’ overlayed and ‘SHC’ in black at the bottom. 

There are obvious naysayers (Bad for one, ‘sex’ apparently being one of his bad words, a conversation which ended in Quackity calling him ‘pussy’ and ‘virgin’ as they ran away from his trident and shiny purple armour), but others seem interested. People need government now, people need someone to lead them.

Conflict breaks out, if there’s one group people want their own. ‘Power Virgins’ are a popular group for defeat amongst betting men (and an obvious joke, as there are apparently no members, just posters appearing mysteriously all over town). ‘The Egg’ makes an appearance, as does anarchy, nameless chaos driving a wedge into proceedings for an ‘election’ just barely in the making and already rigged by Quackity.

George has been drafted in making weapons for the SHC  (a precaution Quackity always takes, especially after the humiliation with Technoblade that left him with curving scars around the mouth) , which  slices into his valuable time, but if it gets his plans on the table, he has to make time. Sleep ticks down to half-an-hour.

He’s in past the outer layer of the building now, and he can almost hear the lava bubbling in the chamber above. So far nothing has been out of the ordinary except for a trip wire he almost triggered, which ran down one long ventilation pipe in the centre of the wall. He managed to break the redstone signal to the trip wire by throwing a glass bottle of water into the mechanism. It was terrifying, and he thought he heard something shift in the prison, like the walls moved one inch to the side, and a thousand noises seemed to be guards rushing for him from all sides.

He starts to move slower, afraid that someone might find his tunnel any day now. Content to watch and wait for movement, rather than get caught doing it. His hole can be found, as long as no-one knows it was him.

-

George moves onto the Egg, the next thing on his agenda.  It holds too many of the pieces, both white and black stained with red. 

He follows the thick red vines to where they grow the largest, strongest, most thorny, where the land is just a mat of red coral and red thorns, a behemoth of the flora and fauna this world was built to support. He had once fantasised that the Egg was truly a good thing, come to fix their problems, strengthen them. But he understands now that it is a leech, a parasite clinging to the earth with razor teeth. The forest is dying, its trees clinging to soil that is sucked dry.

He finds a pit of them, and what feels like a root, that shudders beneath his touch. 

His move to place TNT at the base is perhaps inadvisable, because the whole thing quivers like a hive, its red coral fans vibrating like lizard tongues, tasting the air, the whole thing writhing and twisting and coiling almost imperceptibly. He climbs a nearby tree and shoots a fiery arrow at the explosives. 

There’s an eldritch scream, some subterranean tremor, a howl beneath the surface that makes his hair stand on end, the ground shifts, the ground buckling around the roots, which are blasted to hell, shrivelled and burnt, the TNT bursting through the thick, woody outer-shell and slitting the inner fruit-like soft flesh into smoking ribbons.

The noise is still reverberating around the hollow, half scream, half ghostly rattling, like a mine-cart swaying down a rickety track, part lost voice from some mineshaft in which you thought yourself alone. The dead, stooped trees around the hollow seem more bent, more like crooked witches’ fingers, and, by some intuition, George knows that the call means Bad and the Egg’s other minions will be here soon, ready to tend to the plant beast. 

He feels the forest all around, below the malevolent impression the red vines have left on it, an ancient thrum, the speech he knows. This forest has been here before  this body , and will be after  it , it sings with promise and bursting life, even now when it holds on only with fingertips.  _“Do it,”_ murmur the trees, in a growing hum,  _“set us free.”_ George knows the forest, he was here when it still spoke, before war and blood came, before the earth was a canvas depicting their destruction.

George knows the forest. And George sets it alight.

He runs with the animals, the ones who are left, a stumbling doe, a wildcat with her kitten, a rabbit, two mangy wolves, lopes marred with limps, a fox with half its coat, its tail hanging low and dirty, even a wild horse finds them, trotting along beside George with nervous nickers.  H e trusts them to evade Bad and whoever else is crashing through the forest to aid the Egg, which now screams and twists in George’s mind, shrieking for revenge. 

The malice and venom fill the woods with more smoke than the fires, which tear through the dry trees, sapped of their water, the soil and vegetation dead and arid. The very earth seems to tremble with the magnitude of its hatred, but George keeps running, nimble without his armour and weapons, through the undergrowth, keeping apace with the horse, and the wolves, and leaning down to help the fox jump a fallen tree. 

They keep ahead of the fires all the way to the edge of the forest, where the old house stands in the middle of the lake. He can see torches bounding down the Prime Path, shouts for water as the community finally comes together to do something right, to put out the fires before  it reaches town. The animals trust him now, in this man-made world, where he trusted them in the forest, so under the cover of darkness he lets them all into the community house, finding some hay bedding from when they kept animals in the stores, and a little salted meat left over from when people lived and loved here.

He slips out, feigns just waking up and approaches the firefighters. Karl is orchestrating the line, wearing a massive SHC badge on his lapel, as if it needed more pointed advertisement that it was SHC helping to save the forest. The eerie green light from the UFO tower and the orange glow of the flames deeper in the woods give everything a sickly tinge, like something out a dream, maybe it looks ethereal, beautiful, if you can see the colours. He grabs a bucket and helps, chucking water on the vegetation closest to the edge of the path, cutting off smoking tendrils of the Egg, which seem to have burnt up and disintegrated far faster than the rest of the woods. The fire rippling below the woody skin, e ating a way down the soft insides.

Out of the fire and smoke, as George helps Tubbo fill more buckets from the lake, he sees Bad, Antfrost, and Punz. They cross the Prime Path to where other Eggpire members are waiting, shivering and not helping with the fire, watching in mute terror as Fundy and Sam make big shows of cutting the vines into tiny pieces.  He abandons his buckets, passing them to a sleep shocked Foolish.

George drifts up to Sapnap and Quackity, who are standing by the empty buckets and directing people to fill them up as Karl points to the dry parts of the forest,  where quite a sizable fringe has been saved, almost hiding the flames from the Prime Path if not for the glowing smoke . “I sense trouble brewing,” he says to Quackity, “we might need to step in.”

Quackity follows George’s gaze to where the Eggpire members are standing up straighter and eyeing the O melette Resistance (who could be guilty for setting the fire in the first place, if George didn’t know better, there was a reason George never gave definitive opinions) with swords in hand. His scarred mouth pulls into a vindictive snarl. “Let them fight it out, and I hope Bad loses.”

“If your theory was right,” says George quickly, “the hold the Egg had should fade, if the Egg is completely destroyed…”

“He still has the rest in his trophy room,” he says, lip curling, “I’ve seen it.”

“Don’t let this blind you,” George continues hurriedly, “I agree with you, that the Egg is dangerous, but we can’t afford conflict tonight, we need to save the forest and the houses on the left side of the Prime Path.” 

Sapnap nods. “SHC might oppose the egg, but George is right, unfortunately, if Bad starts trouble tonight we could lose everything we hope to have power over. There’s not much point in fuckin’ winning an election for a burnt piece of shitty land.”

“Surprised to see you finally take a good stance on something, Sappy.” George grins as Sapnap punches his arm.

“Alright ladies,” calls Quackity over the steadily increasing noise of snapping twigs and crackling fire, “let’s break it up, we need you all on water to save the town, and whatever’s left of the forest.”

“And the Egg,” Antfrost shouts back over the Prime Path, his feline eyes slits, “and save what’s left of the Egg.”

Quackity concedes with what sounds like terrific restraint.

Later, as the fires begin to die down and smoke fills the dawn sky like volcanic clouds, Technoblade arrives, his horse lathered from heavy riding, his usual splendour cast aside for riding clothes, his eyes fixed on the blackened wood, the smoke drifting through the trees they had saved along the fringe. He sees the Eggpire, standing apart from the others, their faces mournful, and laughs. He raises a hand, as if in toast. “And here’s to the rest burning too!” A resounding cheer from Fundy, Jack Manifold, and Eret (who finally came down from his castle to help,  _his castle_ , George’s) which dies away in the cold dawn.

-

George leaves the fiances of SHC to deal with the aftermath, and goes down to the lake to make sure the animals got out alright, leaving onto the other side of the lake where the forest is still thick, and washes himself in the lake. Even in this cold water, coral flourishes, and a few cod as long as his arm weave among the thick weeds. He swoops to the bottom, until the ash is a greasy film on the surface, and he pulls himself out onto the path.

He trots back past the dissipating crowd, the Eggpire crew slinking off towards the Badlands, and others filtering back to their homes, watching the smoke rise slowly, and nods to Sapnap and tells him he’s going to take a nap.

He follows the Eggpire track through the smouldering wood, half burnt, half springing with new life, the floor springing with ash and moss and the remnants of the Crimson. His crimson, his fire, had eaten it all, chewed it up, and spat it out.

For half-an-hour, he stops at the bay, hiding in the smoke choked birches to watch Sam enter Pandora’s, and then exit a little while later, satisfied that his prisoner was all safe, that the fire hadn’t been a distraction. George didn’t need distractions, George was his own smoke screen.

Sticking to the half-light of the smoky trees, George slid like a ghost through the Badlands, following the herd of footprints to the entrance of Bad’s trophy room. He hung back, concealing himself in the thick grass at the bottom of a hill about a mile away to scout out the best attack on the Egg.

If there was one thing that frightened him now: it was that thing. The primordial scream still shivered through his ribcage, like skeletal hands playing a harp, and if it found some way to communicate that it had been him who had lit the TNT and the fire, his cover would be blown. He watched for hours, until the sun was high in the sky, until the Egg’s minions, except Antfrost, Skeppy, and Bad, returned to the surface looking dejected and lost.

He watched for weaknesses, but saw only their shared sorrow. He had no hope getting one of them to talk, what little he had gathered from Ponk a couple of weeks ago told him that weaker members, more susceptible to outside influence, (or Purpled, who only had allegiance to Bad, not the Egg), were left in the antechamber, not allowed near the Egg. There were very few of them anyway, little room for uncertainties, disloyalties, or conflicts.

He pondered his next move as they left across the plains. If he struck tonight they might be on high guard, but if he left it too late they might devise some better protection. He knew from Ponk’s awe-filled description (that he had been given by Punz and related back to George) that the Egg sat on the floor of a large man-made cavern that Bad and Skeppy had made a while ago.

Now the fire had ended… He turned back to the forest. He had shown them that the Egg could be destroyed, and now there was no reason not to attack. If he had help, got Quackity fired up about this… Conflict was no stranger to them, and if the general consensus that Bad was being controlled by the Egg was true, its destruction might mean the release of his mind, and therefore there was no real downside…

George sprung to his haunches and ran, keeping low, back to the tree line.

The sun was baking, rays shooting through the burnt branches and swirling smoke, still rising from the smouldering forest floor. George made haste as he jogged through the undergrowth, the forest seemed to melt around him, letting him pass with the swift agility of a stag in his prime, his heart pounding, lungs burning with smoke.

He slowed as he reached the Prime Path, and set about finding the SHC. Their ‘base of operations’ was currently Karl’s house, the only one of them who still had a home intact, none of them good enough builders to attempt creating a base just yet. When he entered and slid down the ladder into the cellar, he found them, tired but still awake, gathered around a map with Callahan and Captain Puffy.

“What’s happening?” he says, intrigued as he leans over Karl’s head.

Callahan looks to Quackity for reassurance  (which almost hurts, because they were friends long before anyone else arrived).

“He’s with us,” he says quickly, turning to George, “we’ve decided to take out the rest of the Egg.”

He stands up slightly straighter, trying to hide his glee, that his plans were spreading out before him without even flipping the coins. “I would have hoped so,” he says, nonchalant, the metaphorical teeth of his mind snapping shut, gnashing at the bit. “I’ve been watching them all morning.”

“I thought you went to sleep,” says Sapnap, with a hint of almost betrayal.

“I was going to.” He rolls his eyes. “Then I saw them and decided to follow.” He leans back over Karl and points to the Badlands, where the contours show the hill he was hiding on. “It’s around here. Do you remember Ponk told us about the room where it’s kept?” he asks Karl.

Captain Puffy smiles grimly. “Is the entrance still sealed off?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter,” George says, “we’ll just pop off and dig through the roof, then drop TNT down there, it drops down on the Egg and…”

“Boom, omelette,” says Puffy, with a slow grin.

“Is the roof thick?” asks Quackity.

“We borrow someone’s beacon for haste, gather the Omelette Resistance.” Puffy is grinning widely now, looking at them all like she’s just been told… well, that the Egg will be no more.

A feral feeling is creeping up the energy of the room, Callahan is jittering in his seat, Karl is bouncing up and down, Quackity tapping quickly on the table. “Egg’s a pussy?” says Sapnap.

They climb up the ladder and split off in different directions, going to all those they know oppose the Egg, keeping their chatter on the down-low, so that the Eggpire doesn’t pick up on them. Puffy goes to rouse her followers, Karl to find a beacon, Sapnap to Eret’s castle, Quackity and Callahan to Fundy and the others. George takes a boat and crosses the cold ocean to find Technoblade (despite Quackity’s distaste).

-

It’s freezing. A cold wind whips snow off the peaks of little mounds of snow, glittering ice particles skittering over the unmarked whiteness, George’s footprints and the dragging hoofmarks of Technoblade’s horse the only marks in the snow. He hasn’t passed recently, the trough of marks a slight indentation in the snow blanket, probably going straight back home after coming to see what all the smoke was about. Even from here, turning back, he can see a dark cloud which is obviously still rising from the trees  across the lonely ocean .

Slowly, out of the snow fog, a low house comes into view. Walls white, or perhaps just coated with snow, dark wood structuring and a low open sided stable with a shaking horse inside, its coat encrusted with snow and ice diamonds. The house is the only thing in the landscape that’s man-made, he knows there was a tower here made by Tommy, but Phil helped tear it down, he heard him complain about it in l’Manberg, before the catastrophe. 

He puts on a shiver, a quake, decides to pretend to be scared, to play the part. He’s not scared, he is wary, because Technoblade is a worthy opponent not just in combat. As an ex-king, he thinks he was probably the worst person they could have sent, until he remembers his other compatriots are Sapnap, Quackity, and Karl, somehow infinitely more annoying, especially to someone like Techno.

He knocks on the door which is flung open dramatically as soon as he touches it, Techno obviously noticing his approach, a dark figure on a white, snow swept landscape. He is once again resplendent in royal clothes people whisper he took after killing the first king. But George has been here since the beginning, and he knows that’s not true. “What do you want?” he grunts, his tusks thrust forward threateningly, as if he wants to force George away  by instilling the fear of Techno in him.

“Puffy sent me,” he says, “we’re taking down the Egg tonight.”

Techno looks at him, his eyes tight in a scowl. “Tonight? Who’s we?”

“No government affiliation,” he says through chattering teeth, the snow grinding into his bones, “anyone who wants it gone. Omelette Resistance, SHC, Power Virgins, whoever they are, old l’Manberg, Dream SMP… anarchy?”

“So you aren’t employing me?” Techno looks vaguely confused by this concept, as if people often come to conscript him to various armies (they probably do).

“No, simply informing you of what is happening tonight,” George says, rather wishing he would be allowed inside. “Puffy said you would want to be there.”

He pauses for a fraction of a second, looking over George’s head towards the cloud of smoke. “What’s the plan?” he asks, shutting the door and pounding down the steps to his horse. He gestures for George to climb onto a cream llama and takes it by the lead as he gets onto his horse.

“Beacon, dig through the roof, drop TNT from the top.”

“What about Eggpire?”

“That’s probably why we need you,” says George, clinging on tightly to the llama.

-

By the time they make it back over the sea, the sun is beginning to set and they ride fast towards the Badlands where they find the others in the treeline. A reasonably large host has been raised and they chatter excitedly about Techno’s arrival. George drops off the llama (which has been pissy ever since they crossed the sea, spitting and bucking) next to Sapnap.

“Well done brother,” says Sapnap, punching him on the shoulder. “We think it’s only Bad, Antfrost, and Skeppy inside.”

“Alright, do we have a plan? Who’s guarding the perimeter and who’s digging?”

“Big Q worked something out,” says Karl from his other side, “don’t worry.”

George looks over to see Quackity and Techno eyeing each other through the growing dark, Quackity’s fingers resting on the scars by his mouth. He remembers hearing about Techno’s blaze of glory, escaping execution and then embarrassing Quackity in a duel which he won by slamming a pickaxe into Quackity’s mouth, despite his netherite armour and  the fact Techno was unarmed , he had won. He sees the anger pulling at the scars, and also the fear in his eyes.

“You’re on lookout, by the way.”

“Thanks,” he says, tearing his eyes away from the charged moment, genuinely happy to give his arms a rest after the slow progress breaking into the prison.

As the sun sets they descend from the woods below the stars into the whispering grass, settling themselves above the Egg from what Puffy remembers of the layout below the surface. Ranboo begins setting up a beacon stolen from somewhere on the server as the others begin digging, George stands a little way-away on a little hillock, keeping his eyes peeled for moonlight on metal or golden torches snuffed out quickly in the dark of the trees. They work under the cover of darkness, the only light the faint glow of the beacon and Quackity’s lantern that he holds as he patrols the hole.

The lower they cut below the surface, below the dirt and into the red tinged stone, the thicker the feeling of immense rage builds up in George’s throat, sinking into his skin from below, like the Egg can sense him nearby. From his look out point he can see yellow patches of grass snaking out of the woods where thick vines stopped the sunlight getting to the grass, like massive yellow snake-skins translucent in the field, now burnt up and blown away as ash. Beneath his feet he can feel the stubby little red fingertips of the new sprouts of Crimson, pushing up through the soil with the tenacity that everything in this two faced world has: a city, a revolution, that can’t stay dead, a crater that always fills up, buildings that cling to soil and rock and to a lake, a world so beaten, and dented, and still not dead. George thinks he might cry, as the moon rises, and looks him down.

He finds his resolve, there on the hillside, his resolve. He has always been resolved, that he would make it work ‘one day’ that ‘one day soon’ he would fix everything, fix the world. But here, on this hillside, there is no going back, the tunnel is almost done, the Egg is almost destroyed, his roots are spreading in their crimson place.

The people mining through the rocks start up a low chant, sweet and mellow and all too perfect, a singed memory of hope, cascading into new songs and new memories. It starts off with a soft voice and a lilting  _“I heard there was a special place”_ winding, in its catastrophic crescendo, through every choked verse, the melodies rising and falling like the moon in the sky, through every version, every symphony unfinished, broken, completed, and broken again. A people united, harmonious under a song that meant “friend” and meant “enemy” and meant “history”. There was no flag over these peoples, there was no ruler, no one leading the song, it just bubbled up like brook.  _“Techno and Dream planted a bomb”_ they sing, as the song comes rushing to the end, a mine-cart with no destination, no future horizons, and the voices rise up, as one as though this had been planned all along, and George thinks he sees lights turning on in some far off house, perhaps hearing the phantoms’ song.  _“G’bye the Crimson, Bye the cri-i-i-mson!”_ (Because now they were blowing something else up, another dirty bomb, and now they say not goodbye to hope, to l’Manberg, but goodbye to true tyranny, and disease: the Egg.)

They stop their work and Quackity ushers them out of the hole. George comes down off his look-out and points out the line of torches making their way down the beach. Karl nods to him, and they start filling the hole with a single layer of TNT. Below, the cavern is visible, and the Egg calls out to them, a red eye in the darkness. 

Maybe it recognises George because it seizes upon him instantly, its cruel malevolence pinning him down in its red gaze. Grappling with his mind with great thorny hooks that tear into his skull and drill through his temples.

Captain Puffy grabs him by the arm and steers him back from the brink. “Watch out,” she murmurs, “it’s still dangerous.”

The others stand around the edge of the pit, fiery arrows primed and aimed. The line of torches speed up, a terrified yell erupting from the dark figures. 

Bad comes bursting out from the secret doorway, half dressed, his broadsword held high, Antfrost behind him and a wild Skeppy. “Hold your fire!” he shouts, his voice shaking with terror and rage. 

The archers pull their strings taut, and fire. 

A low hissing, and everyone runs for cover, shooting across the moonlit grass towards the trees.

George half trips into the treeline, and there is a cataclysmic noise, like a thousand screams, and ten thousand earthquakes.

Everything fades out of focus, like a telescope moving too fast to bring any one thing into view. The world brightens, like the sun is coming up, but its the explosion, ripping apart the earth in clods that fly into the trees and rain down on their heads. George can’t hear, all there is is ringing, and he thinks he might be screaming because his throat feels torn and aching. 

Bad, Ant, and Skeppy are all on the edge of the new crater, flung just clear of falling into the abyss, they appear catatonic, because of the Egg or the explosion is anyone’s guess. The rest of the Eggpire are knocked to the ground a few feet away, like dominoes, or a tower of cards.

He hopes it is this easy, that the thing is dead now, that their simple, brute force plan has won this war. He doesn’t like when things get complicated, when there are quests required, or special ceremonies. He hopes this was enough.

George rolls onto his back and realises that the sun will come up soon, just a matter of hours, once again onto a smoke filled blue backdrop. He wonders when the last time he slept was.

-

The Egg gone, George follows the others back to the community house, ears still ringing. The ex-Eggpire members moving at a shell shocked shuffle at the centre of the crowd, those who hadn’t been involved joining the procession, asking shocked questions.

He looks around and sees the withered red vines already decaying and turning back to earth. He makes a note to check everywhere he knows roots exist for any remains, to make sure the thing is dead, so the titan can’t come back for him.

When they finally reach the house, he sits outside, his calves in the water, leaning back on his hands, watching the sunrise above the treeline. Drifting out into the cool night air, Quackity begins his sermon, his voice filling the stars with their magnitude. He turns his head to look into the glowing interior of the community house, sees Techno leaning on his sword behind Bad who looks vacant, his white eyes even more void than usual, the red slowly fading, a great many faces gathered, eager and frightened, and hopeful around the small room. He catches Sapnap’s eye and feels the matched nostalgia for the broken home they stand in.

He remembers shrieks and games. He remembers three. And then just a few. 

And then many. And chaos.

He skulks at the edge of the proceedings, listening to the ‘court’ that the SHC has set up at short notice, watching the case for the Badlands soldiers. Watches as Quackity magnanimously rules mercy and peace, ignoring Techno’s “who put him in charge?” and his taunting retelling of the battle after the failed execution. The Egg is ruled an evil entity that poisoned them, and they are placed under the care of Eret, to be kept at his castle to be watched, their weapons and armour taken without protest, the vapid empty look still clear in their eyes.

He goes to get some sleep in the forest, the sweet berry bushes sweeping him into their prickled arms, the trees bowing over him, their heavy heads doting, the trunks moving closer like walls around him. 

He sleeps for hours, until the afternoon sun is well and truly piercing the tree canopy, and a pink face as wrinkled as the ancient tree trunks is looking down at him, framed by a horse’s long snout and the stubby furred face of the damned llama. He shuffles up to his feet, suddenly wary, and the forest raises its back like a spooked cat, the trees rustling with whispered threat and promise.

Techno looks up and then down at George. “There was no need for a blade,” he says.

“But you wanted to be there.” He shrugs, leaning back against a tree. “Puffy wanted you there, as her ally.”

“It was very melodramatic, I needn’t have turned up.”

“’ _G’bye Crimson’_?” He smiles, feeling the sunlight dapple on his face, wonders if his eyes look like sweetest honey or dangerous abyss. “It was a little, but it’s gone now so what’s the problem?”

Techno watches him, eyes flinty. “I feel like something else is coming. Keep in touch.”

It feels like a threat. “Of course. Buy a blanket for your poor horse.” He plasters a dopey smile on his face and strokes its snout.

“‘ _Something wicked this way comes’_ ,” he insists, his expression hard, and knowing, and confused all at the same time. He was a powerful opponent in all ways.

-

George spent the rest of the day plunged in tropical water, crushed in a tight dark tunnel, a single lantern, placed further down in the alcove where the trip wire had been, his only light, the small space making it difficult to swing the axe, his skull melting with the heat radiating through the obsidian, the lava singing just above him. Making his way home through dark rock. Home, hidden in the black, through lava and thick walls. But home. Still home.

-

Later that evening, George finds himself in Alyssa’s garden. He watches as shades of himself dart across the water, Callahan and Alyssa swaying in a little boat, a wooden tub with oars really, in the middle of the lake, cod and salmon swirling around their fish hooks. A Dream shaped being jumps along the path, screaming bloody murder as George chases him; another memory and George is hiding behind him while Sapnap takes swings at him, trying to get at him even as he shelters himself, giggling, behind Dream’s shield; the water is warm in the summer, lapping the boardwalk as George works carefully through the farm, sun burning the back of his neck, hands gripping bushels of wheat, Sapnap drying out after a swim nearby, and Dream smiling at him, free, free, and loving.

It’s lovely, George thinks, that these sunset shaded ghosts can still walk in the twilight, taking their endless summer for granted.

He thinks he sees Ponk out of the corner of his eye, complaining about his tree being burnt down, and his own laughter drifting over the water.

And he thinks he sees the dark obscuring half his face as his ghost stands in the centre of an abandoned home, a shell with all the light and laughter that held it together peeling back to reveal old brick and broken windows. He thinks he sees the side of light waxing and waning, becoming a crescent, a sliver of light down his jaw.

He gathers the resolve he found and slips out of the garden, leaving the ghosts to play in the water and quarrel about petty little things and say  _“of course I never want you to go… I never want you to leave.”_

And he wishes and he hopes that he can make this whole world a playground for the ghosts. A world spun from flaxen gold and sweet memories, craters scabbed over with grass and trees and neighbouring builds, none of them uniform, but all clean and pure. He thinks about what he has to do, to make the whole world a nostalgic photograph, and thinks, as he looks at his hands, torn and bloodied and burnt from hard work below water, that it is all worth it.

-

He finds Niki at his hollow in the woods, her serious eyes fixing on his in the starlight. A bee stumbles drunkenly past, its large, ungainly body weaving through the tight trees.

“George,” she says in greeting, her expression apprehensive and also made of steel. 

He greets her in return and drops down onto a seat of moss, staring out through the thicket to where the trees are thin and burnt, black charred stubs crouched close to the ground.

“Karl said I would find you somewhere here.”

“Did he send you?”

She bristles instantly. “No-one ‘sent me’.”

“Alright,” he says easily, “what is it you need?”

“Bad is… acting oddly,” she says, tensing a little as if she expects him to turn her away, “he won’t stop rocking. I’m on the guard rota for keeping an eye on them, they told me to tell them if anything happened, but they just won’t _listen_.” She spits the last part savagely, and George remembers the tree and the fire and feels it pound in his soul. “It’s all ‘where are the askers’ and ‘he’s been acting off since the egg’. But this is different.”

George is already moving back through the forest, Niki keeping pace with him as they head in the direction of the community house to head up the hill to the castle. “When did you notice the rocking start?”

“A few hours ago,” she says, anger making her breathless, “the only one who gave a fuck was Callahan, he’s gone to get medical equipment from the other side of town.”

“Are any of the others acting the same?” he asks urgently.

“Not when I left, but I’ve been away for a few hours, I got off shift.”

He speeds up slightly, taking it at more of a jog, Niki moves in tandem beside him.

“Do you think it’s the Egg?”

“The separation might be causing some problems… or maybe the Egg is coming back, draining him… We don’t know what the fucking thing is, or what it does.” He pauses his train of thought. “Have you spoken to Ghostbur? he might have some answers.”

“He’s AWOL, vanished yesterday mid-talking to Tommy.”

George swears colourfully as they hit the planks of the Prime Path and continue to run up to the castle. “I have no idea if I can help, by the way,” he pants, trying to pick up more speed but his energy sapping.

“I know,” she says, “but you’re the only one who can get Quackity, Eret, and all that lot to listen.” She’s breathing hard, a hand on her side as if she has a stitch.

“Reverse mind infestation with the Egg? Now it’s destroyed it’s grabbing Q?”

“They’re not acting _that_ weird,” she says with a gasping half-laugh.

“Good,” he says, shooting her a genuine grin. This problem feels good to work through, it doesn’t have to be secret, doesn’t have to be dirty and hard fought. This can be clean and open and he doesn’t have to resort to _any means necessary_. This fight he can win on a full-moon.

He and Niki clatter down the steps into Eret’s ( _George’s_ ) dungeon, where the Eggpire soldiers are kept inside a large metal cage. By the gate, looking bored, is Jack Manifold, guarding them with an unwatchful eye. “Alright George?” he says, uncrossing his arms and standing up properly.

George rushes to the bars with Niki close behind him. Whatever the rocking that Niki noticed was, it has ended, but Bad is now lying on his side, trembling, his skin a graphite grey rather than the usual smooth void black. The others are also all quivering, Ant’s fur looks matted and unhealthy, Punz appears vacant. Purpled is the only one who looks like he might survive the night, so George’s mind is already whirring past the now undeniable fact that the Egg has something to do with this.

“Get Quackity, Karl, and Sapnap down here now,” he says to Jack, “I don’t care if they’re asleep, I think we’ve got a problem.” He looks like he might argue but rushes away up the stairs, his armour clanking. “Niki, find Puffy and go and have a look at where we blew the Egg up yesterday, and anywhere you remember their being roots. The trails are pretty easy to follow, it’s where all the grass is dead.”

She nods, resting a hand on the pommel of her short sword. “You think it’s back?”

“I don’t know, but it will help narrow some things down if you find it still dead.” She turns and runs to the steps. “Oh!” he calls after her, “and if you feel the Egg trying to corrupt you, cut a slice along your palm with your sword, just in case you can’t tell us.”

George pushes close to the bars and focusses his attention on Purpled. “Have they been like this long?”

“A few hours, it’s like withdrawal or something.”

“I hope so,” he replies, rocking back on his haunches as the sound of Jack and the others echoes down the passage. Those still lucid, crane their necks as Quackity bounces into view. 

“Boxed like fish,” he says. He seems to be enjoying his new found power, despite the election not having happened yet. Eret, who followed him down, doesn’t seem to be angered by Quackity’s self-appointment. _Heavy is the head that wears the crown_ , George remembers, maybe he’s happy to have someone take away the responsibility.

“Boxed like fish,” George agrees readily, “but I think there might be something wrong.”

“ _What_? What the fuck is going on now?”

“They seem sick,” George says, careful to broach the subject of his sending people off to do things without Quackity’s permission, “Niki said she’d go and check on the Egg with Puffy, make sure it’s not regrowing already, and I think she mentioned that --” Boots sounded above, striking stone. “-- That will be him! Callahan went to get medical supplies, see if we can work out what’s wrong with them.”

Alyssa, followed by Callahan, both holding boxes of potions and herbs, nervously slipped into the dungeon, eyes wide as they s ee Eret and Quackity, but relaxing when they see George crouched on the floor. He hasn’t seen Alyssa in a long time, her hair in a loose braid, looking small and vulnerable beneath the high ceilings of the castle, like she should never be encased in rock, or below ground, but constantly in that garden by the lake with sun in her hair.

“Cal found me,” she says, mostly addressing George, “told me Niki said something bad was happening.”

“We don’t know what it is yet,” says George, “but Big Q has his best guys on it.”

He watches as Quackity approaches him and the cell, his eyes focussed on the sick forms. He sees the power lust, still present in his dark eyes, calculating (the way he has been since Schlatt) and sinister. The scars around his mouth look angry. George thinks Quackity would be his match if he would just use his eyes and see that George was not under his control, that maybe if Quackity didn’t listen to him, wasn’t so easy to influence with smiles and songs and laughter, Quackity could have been working with him, spending long nights together below the prison cutting through rock. But Quackity isn’t looking at him, at what he believes is already under his control, instead his eyes are on the others, over what he doesn’t yet control, holding what he could hope to gain control over in his deliberate, purposeful gaze.

And George watches Quackity, watches his mind tick over. Goads him with a plaintive, soft look, just George who wants to  _help_ . “Come on Q, we can’t let them die down here. They’re good warriors, good workers… Good people.”

“They aren’t going to die,” he admonishes, but he waves for Jack to unlock the door, ushers Alyssa and Callahan with their supplies into the cell. George follows them with a large, grateful smile at Quackity.

They drop to their knees. Ant, Bad, Punz, Ponk, and Skeppy are all lying in varying degrees of sickness. Purpled is sitting anxiously with his knees pulled up beneath his chin. “What’s wrong with them?” he whispers.

None of them reply, Alyssa and Callahan working quickly, getting smelling salts to wake them and checking vital signs and their temperature with the backs of their hands. George works smoothly beside them as their assistant, fetching cool cloths and cutting bandages for any wounds sustained during the explosion that hadn’t been tended to for some reason. 

During the first wars (that George tended to stay out of as much as possible, normally pretending to sleep, or once citing building a home as his reason for staying out) after the battle was ended a small group of first aiders would descend on the battlefield, carrion crows and vultures carrying tourniquets, bandages, and health potions. George would help Alyssa and Callahan as they picked through the mud and blood and bodies, some were well and truly dead, others husks ready for resurrection, others wounded and sobbing into the fire smeared skies. George thinks the dark face of his moon is  stained with the churned up mud and choking black smoke of those fields, that the sharp glitter of his eyes was made from broken swords plunged in deep dark earth.

They feed them regenerative potions, health tonics, gently lift water to their lips and press soft bread into their hands. They’re still shaking, quivering like leaves in a wind shaken tree, but they begin to settle, to murmur brokenly about red voices and red shrieks and red red red. Ant recalls the red film over everything, seems enamoured by the blue of George’s tunic, like he’s never seen a colour so beautiful. They whisper sorry, like it’s a twisted secret, like the guilt eats them up inside.

Niki and Puffy return to the castle and give a hurried report to Quackity and George that nothing seems disturbed, that even with digging where large infestations had taken root had not pulled up still living roots. It was dead.

Bad wails a little brokenly at that, eyes pained and fearful like he doesn’t know why he’s crying, barbed tail whipping through the dust on the floor. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

The shock, the pain from the Egg being destroyed so suddenly, the cataclysmic shifting of the earth that had shattered them, begins to sift to the backs of their minds, slowly healing. Their tremors becoming less and less until it’s only a wildness around the eyes.

George thinks they’re going to be okay.

This is good, a lot of his plans rely on Bad and Ant, they also rely on a world with only one person’s hands on the strings, no coiling red vines stealing away his puppets. George watches from door as they cross the drawbridge, freed by Quackity, who seems to have some genuine pity for them ( _Schlatt_ , provides his mind dryly,  _the Egg reminds him of Schlatt_ ). 

-

After the whole Egg business seems mostly cleared up, though some are demanding reparations for damages to property, Quackity begins to up the ante in the election race. He knows just as well as George that Karl and Sapnap will get bored soon, as they always do with Quackity’s schemes for power, and they need to find something to excite them and interest them. George third-wheels their tides of interest and boredom.

Quackity finds games for them, mundane tasks become competitions, he bullies them into jobs with laughter and “any askers?” when they try to protest. He herds them towards the finish line, a mad conductor with a whip. George moves alongside him, his strings on Quackity’s arms, the conductor’s conductor.

There are things to orchestrate, and things to let alone. Things to watch and keep wait over. George wishes he had more eyes and more hands and more time.

“ _Any means possible,”_ says the voice that lives on the dark side of the moon, _“whatever it takes.”_

George hides his daggers away and hopes he’ll never have to use them, but if he has to spill blood for peace, so be it.

Things he could not have foreseen begin to happen in l’Manberg’s footprint, the crater. A symbol of peace made from old, repurposed wood and stone, taken from the wreckage, a white flag flies more or less where the l’Manberg flag used to stand, burnt and rebuilt and re-dyed and burnt again, now flying white and pure and smoke stained in the briny winds.

He watches it, when he has time, when he isn’t in a vertical shaft beginning to fill with sulphur, dark water far below, lava above, pickaxe swinging slowly and surely into the rocks above. He watches it, and works out who the ants are, scrabbling over the rubble to find lost trinkets and build small structures like first aid tents and log cabins, flowers and leaves springing up between smashed rocks. Niki is there sometimes, joined occasionally by Puffy, with flowers and seeds which they sow betwixt the rocks. Bad comes every night to check the peace symbol for damage. Even Connor appears sometimes, from wherever he hides out in the wilderness, to begin creating a small pond near the bottom, where he releases fish and sits on his home-made jetty to catch them all over again. 

He helps, sometimes, gives Bad a hand in painting the peace symbol one night, and another helps Connor pull a large salmon onto the dock.

Life blooms here again, like that was the only purpose of this land, the only thing it could ever be used for. People came back here, to whatever was left, and built again.

George loved it, cherished it, however much he had been opposed to them in the past. Whenever he had the time, usually just as the sun was going down, he would sit at the edge of the crater, and watch someone pick their way down the sloping path of a wall that now lay like pavement up the side of the chasm, and watch it grow.

-

He finds Bad a few days later sitting beneath a tree in the Badlands, facing out to sea, his expression lost. He drops down beside him and watches the rushing tide. He schools his face into one of nervous fear. “Hey Bad,” he begins, “I know you’re not feeling amazing right now, but I really need your help with something.”

“What do you need?” he asks, his expression friendly and faintly concerned. Trust Bad to do anything for his friends, endearing but also very useful.

“It’s a pretty big ask,” says George, fiddling with his fingers, “I’m not sure… I’ll try and do it myself, don’t worry…”

“Just tell me George… It was you and the… _Language_ Havers who helped us get rid of the – the Egg. So please, I owe you.”

George nods slowly, as if fighting through self doubt, planning his next words carefully. “I was… Well, it’s a long story… but I’ve been sort of threatened by someone.”

“ _Threatened_? Who by? I’ll sort it out George, don’t worry!”

“No, really, I couldn’t ask that of you.” George sighs, biting his lip nervously. “And anyway, I think it was the kind of threat that isn’t likely to be carried out… Ugh, it just makes me anxious…” The sun is bright, a winter kind of bright, white and cool, gleaming off the close waves. A breeze brushes through the long grass, like it’s copying the ocean, one a deep rolling rush, the other a faint whisper of chattering grass blades. A little way behind them, there’s a great shadow in the plains where the new crater resides, rich, dark soil revealed to the sky. “I just want a protective measure. And… and I know it’s a big ask…”

“Just tell me, seriously George, I won’t mind.”

“How many… how many enchanted golden apples do you have?”

“Enchanted? George who’s been threatening you?”

“… Technoblade. But it was kind of a threat, kind of not, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Either way I’d feel a lot safer with some… Of course, only if you can spare them.”

Bad smiles, his barbed tail rising up happily in the sun. “I’d love to help. I think I have two, I raided a few desert temples a month ago.”

“If you can spare them… Just one would be enough.”

-

Back below the prison, George has fire resistance potions and fire proof gear to deal with the lava, but for Dream’s escape he thinks something more drastic might be in order. Because no-one has ever escaped, George doesn’t know how long it will take for the guards to be alerted, for Sam to rush through the security system and find Dream gone, a long shaft dropping into the water from the floor. So he thinks giving Dream an enchanted golden apple, a weapon, a pair of depth strider boots he found poking around some chests, and some dolphins should be enough to give Dream the head start and enough to give him a fighting chance should he be caught.

He breaks through the final piece of obsidian and cool lava rushes around him, heavy and gelatinous, bubbling around his head, an odd tickling sensation as the fire resistance does its work. He had filled in the tunnel behind him with dirt to stop the lava hitting the sea and sealing him inside this tomb.

He forces himself up, fingertips pushing on the rough edge of rock as he pulls himself through the hole and out into open, red space. Around him he begins to place blocks, creating a funnel up to the top until the odd feel of the lava runs away. He slides back down to the bottom and destroys the dirt slowly, slipping into the water until his clothes harden with little crystals of hard black rock.

He climbs back up and begins to break the last blocks, sweat streaming down his back and face, encased on all sides by lava which has warmed everything inside and outside the tunnel to a dizzying level. His shoulders  _ache_ , his legs are too tightly clenched in the tiny space, he can hardly  _breathe_ .

The main cell, he knows, is shaped like a sphere, suspended over the lava, with a three high cell right in the centre. He still has a little way to go, and it will feel like a long way. But now he is close, and now he knows Dream can hear him, worming his way through the rock. He can imagine Dream dropping to the ground, pressing an ear to the floor, wondering if his mind is playing tricks on him.

He makes good ground, inspired by the closeness to his goal, to freeing Dream, to releasing chaos. He feels his heart pounding hard and fast in his sweaty chest, one of his most important chess pieces has been locked away in something they can’t escape, but now he will release them, smash through rook or knight or king to get to his essential piece, his other side, the matching brain that thinks  _“anything, anything for safety, for peace, whatever it costs”_ .

He is close.

He is close.

He is close to breaking Pandora’s Box.

-

When he leaves, he takes down the funnel again and hides the top of his tunnel with dirt. It takes a while, but if the tunnel is visible when most of the lava drops down if a visitor arrives at the prison… his hard work would be for nothing.

He slips into water that is cold in the night, and filled with dark shapes that do not resolve themselves into any physical shape he can understand. He splashes to the shore after concealing his tools, the surf silty and stinging his eyes.

The moon looks at him from where it hangs over some far off monolith of civilisation. The moon smiles. George smirks back.

-

It was summer, the air heavy with the scent of apples and farm animals and hot grass. The world was dewy and damp with humid summer rain, the earth rich and dark where George has tilled it, bright yellow wheat swaying in a low breeze, that brushes sweat off their bruised skin. Dream tells him the grass is v erdant , the trees the deepest green he’s ever seen, and Sapnap tells him the glass shines with golden light in their windows.

He star fishes in the water, floating across its placid surface, every so often some stray fish fin brushes across the backs of his hands or around his feet. His face is the moon, turned back and reflecting the glory of the sun, his dark face hidden beneath the water entirely. 

Dream drifts close.  _“This is all ours,”_ he says.

There have already been new people stepping through the rift, and George can hear them, far off, talking and loudly declaring new laws and independence.  _(“Any primers?” says Tommy as he strides down the Prime Path like he made it, like it wasn’t Sapnap and George who cut that wood into straight planks and lay them carefully in the mud, nailing them carefully together.)_

“ _Not any more,”_ says George, _“there’s more than us here.”_

“ _They want to poison it.”_

He didn’t believe him then.  _“No, Dream. Let them play and sing and laugh, nothing will come of it.”_

Everything came of it, and George’s Eden was splintered into a thousand shards, and so was the full-moon. The full moon lost its shine, slid into ruinous shadow.

-

The election day comes with Techno looking as angry as a thundercloud, as if he can’t believe they’re doing this again, after everything that’s happened. George can’t believe it either. They are arrogant, he thinks, to believe that this time it will be different. New governments with the same faces, a new lick of paint, and nothing new.

SHC wins, obviously, Quackity rigged something, but fireworks go off, and despite his sore shoulders and numb body, he dances in celebration. Everyone does, as Quackity’s presidential promise was to give every group and person and voice at council meetings, and to offer positions to members of other parties, allowing independent groups like Snowchester independence under SHC rule. Even Techno looks somewhat placated, even though his annoyance is still palpable half-way across the room.

They’ve repurposed the Walmart building into a hall with drinks and food and dancing and festooned with decorations that George knows Quackity had Sapnap and Karl preparing all week.

Techno stands up and begins a loud argument with Quackity about law and governments and whether or not his cottage fell under jurisdiction and whether that meant he should have a voice at meetings or not.

George was one of the first to leave, after making sure everyone was drinking and eating (except for those who had not come to the party, angered by the blatant cheating of the ‘scumbags’, the SHC), letting them make a big joke about how he slept through everything fun.

As soon as he was out of sight, he starts to run, cutting over the hill and into the forest. The moon is bright, shuddering between the trees like a torch flashing on and off as he sprints, paying no heed to the grabbing brambles and startled creatures, skirting round the burnt area so he doesn’t slip in the deep coat of ash.

He splashes into the lukewarm water, diving as soon as he gets deep enough, swooping towards the tunnel. The night before he had taken the risk to leave the funnel up, knowing that no-one would be going to see Dream when the elections were going on. He crawls up the tunnel, banging his elbows on the rock walls.

At the top he slams his pickaxe into the rock in earnest, ignoring the pain of his shoulder bashing back into the rock with every swing and his bloodied elbow screaming in pain.

It’s the last block, and he has little to no fear of being disturbed.

The draining feeling of the mining fatigue only makes him swing harder, faster, his frustration mounting with every blow, until finally it splinters, raining down on his head. He is silent for a moment, in the half darkness, his breathing sharp, looking up into the black cell above him.

A lantern flickers on as George lifts his head over the edge of the tunnel.

Dream is staring at him, his broken mask skewed, hastily placed over his features. When he sees George, it drops, forgotten, his face shocked. The scar looks deeper in the lava lit cell. “ _George_ ?” he croaks, his eyes surrounded by deep pits. “I thought… I thought it was someone coming to execute me.” His hair is greasy, his skin shining and oily with sweat, he looks almost shrunken, his skin pallid and unhealthy. George drinks him in like he’s the first clean pool of water he’s seen for days in the desert, an oasis of chaos.

“Still might,” he says with a wink, “come on, I don’t know how much time we have.”

“How did you…?”

“People underestimate me.”

Dream nods in wonderment. “Yes… yes they do.” He springs to his feet, suddenly energetic and moves towards George, half wobbling as he squats down next to the hole, his eyes above George’s, like they always are, too tall and gangly for anyone to bear.

“There’s a rope, kind of hard to see, but there’s water at the bottom, so don’t worry.” The cell is even hotter than the tunnel, stale air trapped beneath the lava, heating radiating from the curtain of molten rock that hangs over the entrance.

He is shaking, but George is too. He looks confused, broken, like he doesn’t understand how this is supposed to work, breathing in soft pants, his eyes worried, like he thinks this is fake, a trap.

“Come on, Dream.”

He squeezes in above George and they begin the descent. The closeness of Dream, crawling down just above him, makes George’s heart pound faster than it has for the months of his imprisonment, like the reason for living has just crashed like a comet into his atmosphere.

They plunge together into the cool water, and then swim to the edge of the prison shadow.

Dream takes great gasps of clean air, hacking and coughing, his eyes red and streaming. George grabs him quickly and slaps a hand over his mouth. “Shh,” he whispers, “we need to be quiet. There’s just been an election but Bad might be already on his way home, you know how he gets at parties.”

He grins behind George’s hand and nods. George removes his hand.

They slip back into the water and George guides Dream to his underwater room with the cow and the potions and the weapons for his escape. “You always forget the shield,” Dream chuckles, his eyes fond in the dark cave.

“Shut up,” he says back, and he sounds unbearably fond too.

“Why now?” Dream asks, his wet hair shining in the faint light glowing from the sea pickles.

“The right time was now, I had to work on bringing all these supplies, and I had to lull people into a false sense of security. Just like you taught me.”

Dream winces. “It wasn’t the right time for you to take the throne. Things were unbalanced, I needed Eret back on my side. You understand, don’t you?”

He doesn’t want to understand, but he does. He feels it in the way Dream holds his wrist gently. “I know.”

“But soon we take it all.”

“Soon.” George pauses, helping Dream pull on a rusted iron chest plate and wondering if Dream knows how truly he means it. “I’ll come and find you later, but I have to pretend to help them find you. I have to hunt you, do you understand? And if I come close you have to attack me just like you would if I hadn’t have helped you.”

“I wouldn’t have fought you even if you left me in there to rot and die,” says Dream. 

Dream starts to cry as they tread water at the peninsula where George hid the dolphins. He weeps goodbye, like it is the hardest thing he has ever done, looks at the sky like it is more tremendous than a thousand golden crowns. And it probably is, to a man who has known only obsidian and a clock for weeks.

George just looks at Dream, his most important piece, framed by the night sky and black waves. And when he leaves he watches shining dark dolphins leaping in his wake as he scuds across the waves, the two power pieces brought together and then separated, better to move around the board and plan an attack. George is Dream’s and Dream is George’s, and they move in tandem across the board, closing in on their objective with cold eyes and harder hearts.

-

George wakes up in the forest in salt dry clothes and hears the war horn blasting. They have found the cell empty.

He washes himself in a forest pool, half the foliage black and burned, the other half lush and dewy. He cleans the salt from his clothes in the freshwater, then hangs them out to dry on the bough of a tree, wrapping himself in his sleeping blanket.

When he thinks he can hide away no longer, he dresses and leaves the forest. He finds  SHC , sans Sapnap, in Karl’s house, the open roof of his house appearing to double as a war room for the time being. Techno, Puffy, Purpled, Punz and a great many other warriors are gathered around the roof as George climbs up among them.

He feigns ignorance, that he didn’t hear the call. 

He feigns stony shock and sinks to the ground as he is told Dream has escaped. 

Techno watches him, his face unreadable.

George lets a single tear escape his frozen mask and hides his face to smirk. The two-faced moon has a sly dominance, all eyes on him as he fakes a suppressed sob. “Where is he? Who helped him escape?” he chokes out, dragging roughly at his eyes with his knuckles.

“We don’t know,” says Karl in a quavering voice, “but Sapnap went after him…”

“We all did,” says Punz, “all the warriors Sam told to stay on alert for a prison break. Sap’s the only one who hasn’t returned.” He sounds worried, the kind of worried that makes George’s heart cramp, because Sapnap is another child of that golden summer, before war and death, when they were all eternal and immortal.

Before he knows what he is doing he is rising to his feet and heading straight for the ladder, his performance forgotten. He  _knows_ Sapnap, knows he won’t stop until he finds Dream. He knows Dream won’t kill Sapnap, but Dream is weak, and Sapnap is irrational when he’s angry. And he knows Sapnap is  _relentless_ , that he will die in a desert somewhere, lungs filled with sand and his skin torn open by cacti. He hears people move after him, sliding down the ladder behind him as he takes his old iron helm from Karl’s basement, where he left it after a night planning the election with the SHC.

Ant grabs his arm as he pushes out onto the Prime Path. “George,” he says firmly, “take a second, think about this –”

George tears his arm away, Bad and Ant follow him at a nervous half-jog. From Karl’s roof he hears Quackity call for him to bring Sapnap back, so they can plan and track Dream down. George knows there must be contingency plans for this, squads planned to scour pre-mapped areas of the world, that they need search parties and fast ranging horses, that they need boats, and cannon, and weapons. George just needs to find Sapnap, before he does something stupid.

“Which way did he go?” They pass through the tunnel and then down the steps into the sprawl of the lower town. Bad mutters nervously about the search starting by the prison, the tunnel they found, Quackity’s calculated assessment that Dream must have gone out to sea. “It’s always been us four, us four chasing Dream. Back before all… all _this_. It was us playing the game, keeping on Dream’s tail. We all know that Sapnap gets reckless, and now we don’t have the luxury of immortality.”

“George –” says Bad weakly.

He rounds on them both as he stops at a weapons cache he knows is buried in the mud, three feet from a small pool of water. “Dream won’t kill Sapnap. Sapnap will kill Sapnap. He’ll plunge into the sea because he sees a light and forget to come up for air. Dive into lava lakes and pay no heed to the time left on his fire resistance. He’ll drive a horse into a ravine as it buckles over from exhaustion. His body will wash up some day, choked with desert sand, or bloated with seawater. Do you want to find him bobbing in the kelp, or tangled in the bones of some goliath he’s tried to kill? Sapnap needs us, to balance him, to check him, to bring him home when it gets dark.” His voice wavers, cracking, he hates that he can’t control it, the hot prickle of tears behind his eyes. He seeks their gaze, his body filled to the brim with uncontrollable emotion, blustering through all his cold barriers, the moon surface cracking to show a brilliant, molten core. “Help me bring him home. You know him, even if the Egg has addled your brains, we know him. He’ll drive himself to death searching for Dream. He thinks he owes a debt, and he’ll lose himself in the fight.”

They both look shell-shocked and reeling, but determination setting on their faces. They both fall heads, in George’s wildest, least calculated toss. Two coins land in his square, and for once it’s not a manipulation, a weighted coin.

He grins, bright and real. “Come on!”

-

They find Sapnap many hours later, George’s calloused fingers tearing new blisters as he pulls at the oars of his boat, Bad and Ant sharing the other, back straining as his tired muscles band together for a final push, searing with an ache born anew. The sun pounds down from above, half blinding them as it glitters from the waves and spray, turning the water’s surface into a many sided diamond.

They see him from a couple of miles off, the waves are low and as George rises the side of a small trough, chasing a small breeze as it ruffles his sweaty, dark hair, he sees a boat drifting, passenger-less. He shouts, and points it out to Bad, who has been scanning the ocean as Ant pulls on the oars, his ears down and fur uncomfortably warm looking.

After a few moments watching the boat, they see a head burst out near to it, like a seal, but shaking like a dog out of a muddy river, then it disappears again.

As they grow closer, they can see his shadow diving down into some deep darkness at the sea floor.

They draw their boats in beside his, towing the loose, drifting vessel in beside them, hooking it close with an oar, and wait patiently for him to resurface. He eventually does, shaking his hair again, sending droplets flying everywhere, pattering loudly on the hollow boats. There is no land for miles, the sea is everything, unending and indestructible. It is everything. It controls everything. It is a god. Sapnap has no care, he floats in its embrace, seems intent on diving deep again.

“There’s caves,” he says, “Dream could be hiding in one.”

“How would he breath?” Ant asks gently.

Sapnap shakes his head stubbornly. “He could still be down there.”

“And what if he is? What will you do?” says George, with flint and hard iron in his voice.

“I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Neither of us could kill Dream, Sap, you could have a blade at his throat and you wouldn’t slice.”

“I would,” he growls. His face is shining with perspiration and saltwater, his bandanna stained with sweat and soaked to transparency, his hair is floppy and coarse with salt. “I could.” But he is crying, wrenching sobs rising from his abdomen.

George feels pity and sorrow and apologetic bile rising in his throat.

“I have to find him.”

“We will,” says Bad, “but Quackity wants us back to the mainland. We need to search methodically, pick up a trail. For all we know he’s looped back into the city and is hiding in some abandoned building.”

Sapnap looks down at the lapping water, as if trying to see through the murk and sparkle. “He could be here though.”

“He could be, but it’s bordering on the impossible,” says Ant, “how would he breath?”

“He’s been trapped for too long,” says George quietly, “he’ll be somewhere with fresh air and animals and trees, he’ll want sunshine and good food, he won’t be underground, he won’t be underwater. He’ll be somewhere close, watching the search parties begin.”

Sapnap latches onto his every word, his eyes still full of angry tears.

George feels guilt pressing at the back of his skull.

“Okay,” he whispers, “okay, you’re right.”

Bad climbs into the spare boat with Sapnap and rows him back. They ache in tandem, right in the heart, a constant oppressive burn that sings of loss and golden summer memories of a boy in a green cloak dancing through the trees.

-

They arrive back at HQ(uackity) as has now been pinned over Karl’s front door (obviously, a lot of work has been done in their absence) forlorn and exhausted, their clothes salt stiffened and their eyes itchy, backs hurting from long, hard rowing.

Karl hugs Sapnap tightly as they enter the cool darkness of his ground floor, Sapnap collapsing into his arms. George can hear quiet talking still happening above on the roof. 

“What’s happening?” 

Karl looks over at him. “We’re trying to work out where Dream might have gone, but it’s just… impossible, there’s too much.”

“Let me and George have look,” mumbles Sapnap, wobbling back from Karl to his own feet, “we know him best.”

They haul themselves up the ladder and onto the roof, where a smaller group of people are gathered in the slowly descending dusk. Quackity is still there, as is Techno, Puffy, and Ponk. A few others are sprawled around the chairs in the corner, but their eyes are closed and they aren’t looking at the map where Quackity’s scrawl is invading every coordinate of the map.

“He won’t be there, no food,” says Puffy, sounding tired and like she’s made the same point several times already that day.

“Are we ruling out his helper giving him food,” says Sapnap from behind him.

The setting sun gives everything a shiny, golden look, the map creasing and yellow, its meticulously painted contours faded. Bad places himself between Techno and George, as if he can protect George from his gaze (and threats, not imagined but greatly exaggerated).

“No,” says Quackity, “but he can’t be carrying much, he’s weak and we know he left by water so any food would have to be in a sealed tin, not much you can fit in one of those.”

George is slightly impressed that they’ve guessed the truth: a biscuit tin with salted meats concealed inside. He leans over the map, looking at the crosses over places Dream would never go, over places he would have missed because they’ve only been constructed recently, over places with too high a population. “Have you checked the l’Manberg crater?”

“Yeah,” says Ponk, “nothing, not even a trace. We’ve checked all over the coast and the Badlands, the burnt out forest, all inside and around the prison. Nothing.”

“How did he escape? Bad mentioned some kind of tunnel, I thought it was impossible to break in to.” 

Sam coughs from where he’s sitting in the corner, he looks embarrassed. “I didn’t expect anyone to tunnel in through the bottom, I thought that drowning and pain would be enough to deter people. You know, George, how long it took to dig through one block on the wall, never mind being underwater, in the dark, on a smooth surface with no purchase, or crawling vertically up a one block tunnel…” He drifts off, looking angry. “It’s absolutely insane. Once I find who did this I’m going to –” He hisses tightly between his teeth and turns away.

“How did we find out he was gone?” George asks, after letting a beat of defeated silence seep into the conversation.

“Sam was doing his usual checks,” says Ant, with a nervous glance at the warden, “but Dream just wasn’t there. He went into the cell and there was a hole in the floor.”

“He rang the warning bells while you were sleeping.” Quackity taps the prison, a dark blot on the map. “We have no idea when he left, the last time anyone saw him was yesterday before the election began.”

“Shit,” says George. “Anyone he might go after?”

Techno snorts. “If you mean Tommy, we’ve convinced Eret to let him stay at the castle, he’s not staying with me again. But who knows what he wants, or who he wants, it could be any of us.”

The dusk was falling steadily now, the midges and bats coming out to dive and buzz in the half-light. George felt the chill (the thrill) of the words settle into his bones.  _His chaos was released, his chess piece that could strike anywhere, unseen and untouchable._

“There’s no point sending out any more search parties tonight Quackity,” he says, “he’s hard to find in the light, let alone the dark. Tomorrow us four hunters will try and pick up a trail by the prison. Don’t worry, we’ve been doing this since the dawn of the world, we’ll find him. Send out others to the places you think most likely. Make sure to check the community house, my mushroom house, the prison again, l’Manberg, the mines below Tommy’s house…”

“We’ve already searched there.”

“Search again,” he says, slamming his palm onto the table.

Sapnap, draws close into his side, looking at Quackity. “George is right. Dream will be hiding in plain sight. Any house that isn’t used, old buildings you made with rift guests, places where important things happened, places you’ve already checked, anywhere he’s gone before, anywhere he might associate with me and George…” He pauses, his hand tight on George’s upper arm. “He’ll have been watching you all day, he knows where you’ve already looked, so check again. Look in all the places he might have been spying on you from. Check food stores where he might have stolen from. He’ll make his move tonight, find somewhere new to hide.”

“I’ll go back to my house,” says Techno into the silence, “tomorrow I’ll make sure he hasn’t been hiding there.”

“He’ll be watching,” repeats Sapnap, and he and George go to the ladder in tandem.

-

The next morning is just as hot as the day before, like the sun has been released with Dream. The forest is humid, the remaining moisture trapped beneath the canopy. Even though the clock does not yet read noon, Sapnap and George are sweating by the time they reach the Prime Path, having both slept the night in the woods, talking long into the  shadows  about where Dream might have gone.

They meet Bad and Ant at the prison, by the sparkling clear water and heavy black shadow of Sam’s creation. They don’t speak much, they don’t need to, they’ve been doing this for eternity. It was a game, then a competition, and now it’s real. 

The four of them splash out into the waves, Ant’s tail lashing, Bad’s horns glinting in the sun, Sapnap’s bandanna rippling in the wind, and George’s heart so heavy with guilt he feels himself sinking into the sand like iron. Synchronised, they slip beneath the waves, the world turning to blue and waving seaweed. They churn up the sand on the ocean floor as they shoot forwards into the shadows, Bad leading the way to the vertical one block tunnel that George had carved into the rock. 

Slowly they scour the ocean floor for clues, brushing their hands through the sand at the bottom, climbing up into the baking tunnel, checking the cell above. They find the cave George carved out beneath the sea-floor (and had cleared out the night Dream escaped), Sapnap crouches in the dark, sea pickle lit room, and George remembers Dream. When he bobs to the surface for air he feels himself almost crying, but he knows this is the only way, and when the water is no longer obscuring his vision, and the sun invades everything, he remembers that soon, everything the light touches will be his, and all the shadows too.

Noon passes with a quick meal of bread and meat on the cliffs. 

Ant and Bad follow the coast of the Badlands, Sapnap and George take the other. Looking for places Dream might have come to land. The general consensus is that Dream wouldn’t have stepped foot on the beach near the prison, just in case someone saw him and the alarm was tripped early, instead he would have swum in the dark a little way and crossed up through the wilds.

They cut further inland when Bad appears next to them, holding ender pearls and breathlessly telling them Ant found a campfire, not more than a day old.

The Badlands are rich, but still blemished by the dead coils of yellowing grass where the Crimson lay, serpentine, all over the land, and the trees here are thin near the edge of the grove of burnt land. The forest still greets George, broken but grateful, moss and fungi already springing up in the soot and ash of the forest floor. In a deeper thicket where neither the Egg nor the fires have broken through the wild crest of brambles and leaves jumbled between slim birch trunks, the remains of a campfire are still warm to the touch. Ant kneels beside it, his expression tense.

“I can’t find a further trail,” he says.

“Yet,” says Bad, his white eyes sharp with determination, “we haven’t found a trail yet.”

-

There was a boy with a  large smile who lived in a house he built with the help of many calloused hands. A house floating in a lake, a dream caught in a cloud. 

Two people bob in a boat, the three eldest are building a court house by the edge of the lake, hidden by a belt of trees, and some new comers are sitting with their legs in the water, confused and enamoured by the bright summer sun and green grass and brave wildlife.

The forest calls to the sun boy and he sings back.

The days wane, the court house gets put to too much use, and for the first time the boy with the bright smile hates one of his creations. People don’t see the beetles as much any more.

The sun grows wilder, hotter, and the land less wild. There are new houses springing up down the length of the path built for no-one, and the smiling boy hates that he didn’t have a hand in building them.

More people stumble out of the rift, and new rifts grow. The courthouse is used even more, and execution becomes so commonplace that immortality shakes on the edge of mortality. There is less of everything, it seems, animals are rare in the clearings, they hide in the trees.

A new person comes and they shoot a deer and break a beehive and the smiling boy feels  _anger_ .

The new people band together and laugh and it’s all a joke at first, a silly, petty thing about some law or other. Then they claim some land and say they’re independent and the land screams as it is wrenched away from a boy with sunlight hands, and the single tree they claim withers without his sunshine eyes.

Ugly cobblestone walls made from lava and rushing water splinter his landscape, where the dewy hills and deep forests once sang to him their sonorous, aching songs.

And rage distils his smooth sunshine pool.

There is war, and he laughs with his friends, but it doesn’t feel real any more. For the first time he is faking a laugh. There are no more lovebirds on the lake, and no more friends sprawling in the sun.

He feels everything ebbing, like the tides.

The world stretches too thin.

He wants to explore, to find some place far away from this, but there are still people he loves here, and if he stretches the world any more it will tear.

The forest calls, and he answers when he has time.

There are elections that stink of corruption that he is dragged into and escapes from. There are battles he abdicates from, but comes back when the dawn is rising through the smoke and helps the wounded with lovebirds from a forgotten lake.

It feels like the tide is still rushing out, like a tsunami is coming and will soon hit.

The animals shake and the trees quiver, because the sunshine is no more. They only have the constant night, and the moon, which reflects back the sunlight of the eternal summer weakly, a shade of what he once was, and there is so much darkness now, swipes of mud, and blood, and soot covering his sunshine smile.

There are explosions as the moon tries again, builds a little house in a quiet backwater behind the woods, and the dark ink fills him entirely, makes him a new moon, gives him the power for eclipse. There are explosions and the world cries out, a chunk of it ripped away with terrifying force. It is dulled to him now, he does not feel his power so intensely. He feels the tsunami hit though. And he stands at the edge of the battlefield. And people scream “where were you!” And he tries to tell them that he was building a new life, not too far away, but a new life without war. But they scream “we needed you!” And the land is desolate, withered and shattered. And he wants to scream back that they did just fine tearing the world apart without him.

He is given a crown for a moment, and he feels the weight of gold, and knows the feel of sunlit lands beneath his fingertips. He sees the promise of everything the light touches. And then it is taken away.

Someone burns down his new life, and the darkness grows stronger. A smile on white bone slips into something crazed. The moon begins to collect his pieces, moving them back to the right positions on the board, ready for a new game, lines up his pawns and hides his king, and realises that this lunatic, with an axe and a false smile and a memory so closely entwined with his own that they are the same, is his favourite piece, his most important piece.

Something menacing takes root in the forest and the moon doesn’t feel it. He is too numb, too dull, too broken. His mind is preoccupied with the slow unfolding movements of people and how to fake a laugh and learning a new language of joking. He probably says “any askers?” as the forest recoils from the crimson smear.

The forest calls, and there is no reply.

There was a boy who was the sun, and he had two friends.

There is a boy who is the moon, and he has his fingers  dancing in a puppeteer’s strings and eyes  glittering, focussing on a chessboard with thirty-three pieces and ten thousand squares. His opponent is invisible, his opponent is his favourite piece, his opponent is a ghost, his opponent is a snaking red vine, his opponent is a crater with a floating ship of hope still lying there, his opponent is a boy with the sun in his smile.

The forest goes silent, it watches. The boy will not answer, she knows.

There is a boy who is the moon, and he wanes and he waxes, and sometimes it feels genuine to laugh and love and forget, and sometimes it feels like a  falsehood with harsh  edges and sharp regrets.

There is a boy…

There is…

The forest calls, and the answer is faint, but the answer comes.

-

He finds Dream in the woods on the other side of the community house, his face shadowed and wary.

“It’s just you,” he says, relaxing. George can see the coy menace, the dancing cruelty, the soft madness to the curl of his shoulder.

“It’s just me,” George agrees, dropping down onto the other side of the campfire. 

“Are they looking for me?” He sounds excited, anticipatory.

“Of course they are.”

He grins and it makes George feel uneasy. “They won’t find me.” He already looks healthier, stronger. He looks more like the boy from eternity. George marvels that this is his final weapon, his most important piece.

“What are you going to do?”

A flicker of rage shoots across his face, fast as lightning and just as deadly. “Make them regret ever touching me.” He looks fond again, his eyes softening so fast that George feels sick. “I can’t believe they underestimated you. How could they not see it? You’re like the moon controlling the tides.”

Maybe it was the honey sweetness, a sepia filter over everything when he broke Dream out of prison, but George didn’t notice this unhinged, unstable feeling to his friend then. It makes him hurt, deep in the chest where his heart still pounds to the beat of dragonflies buzzing in reeds and Dream’s hands on his showing him how to shoot a bow. He smiles, simpering and sweet and  _fake_ . “Not quite that good, I always thought I would get caught. It was so scary.”

And Dream underestimates him, and the sickness of cheating him, tying strings to the back if Dream’s hands and legs, fades. Because here is the man who thought he could play with George like anyone else, take a crown and everything the light touches and hold it out like a carrot on a string, and here is the man who took George’s smashed and burned second chance of a mushroom home and turned it into a political motivator to exile a child, and here is the man who underestimated George. And here is the fool who underestimated him. And here is the fool. 

“It’s alright, I’m out now, and they’ll never find out it was you. But I need you to do something for me… It’s not very big, and it’s not dangerous… I just need your help.”

George goes big eyed. “Anything!”

“I need you to lead the hunt in the wrong direction.” Dream moves his piece. 

George smiles, already knowing it was a blunder, already knowing that Dream hasn’t seen the big plan, hasn’t looked at the pieces and realised where the real danger is, has looked at the queen and forgotten the pawn moving to the last rank, ready to upgrade. He knows that Dream has underestimated him. “I wouldn’t have thought of that… It’s so… Pretending not to know where you are…” He laughs. “Have you left a fake trail?”

“Yes,” says Dream, smiling gently, “it’s towards Bad and Skeppy’s old mansion. Just make sure you pick up the fake trail in old l’Manberg, I’ve left some easy things to follow. It’s just like playing a manhunt, alright? It’ll be fine.”

The moon turns its silver face and smiles, sweet and forgiving. “I need to get back, before anyone misses me.”

“Bye George, thank you.”

The trees chuckle, and the moon laughs with them.

-

They pick up the fake trail, which leads them like breadcrumbs towards the furthest end of town. Quackity sends out big search parties to scour the area, and George can almost feel Dream’s laughing eyes on them.

Quackity sits at a table next to the Prime Path, watching them search, calling out suggestions for hiding spots and what Dream might be doing for food and water out this far.

As the sun passes the peak and begins the descent towards late afternoon, Tommy joins them with his foghorn voice to join the search. “I’ll find the bitch,” he proclaims, “hey! Bitch boy! I’m here!” He crashes through the bushes, SHC, Ant, and Bad watch from the table where (apart from Big Q himself) they’re all having a well-deserved rest (Quackity hasn’t even attempted to look). 

Eret flops down beside them. “Sorry, I couldn’t stop him.”

“It might coax him out of hiding,” says Ant with a shrug, “unorthodox, but might work.”

“Bitch! Aah!” He shrieks and Sapnap leaps to his feet as an arrow pierces the tree right in front of Tommy.

Almost everyone drops what they’re doing and turns in the direction the arrow came from. Sapnap leads the charge up the hill, many others following swiftly on his heels. Quackity, Niki, Ranboo, and Ghostbur (returned from his disappearance with a dishevelled Friend a few nights before) gather around Tommy who looks white and is talking quickly and nonsensically about “women” and “not scared” and “bastard bitch green boys”, holding a scrap of paper that was tied to the arrow.

“It’s just a smiley face,” says Niki, showing Ghostbur who shrugs, scanning the treeline on top of a hill behind them where the arrow might have come from.

Ranboo is shaking, looking at the image, and he turns away swiftly. Philza approaches and takes the boy under his wing. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, “we’ll find him.”

“He’s messing with us,” says Quackity, “he’s known we were here the whole time.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he led us here,” says George, sick with irony, “a fake trail.”

“What for?” asks Niki, flipping the note over as if looking for something more.

“To scare us, throw us off?” says Ghostbur with a shrug, ruffling between Friend’s ears absent-mindedly, “who knows? He’s insane. I was insane once…” His voice wavers, dreamy and floating. “It was euphoric.”

Niki leads him away to where Philza is frowning anxiously at a still shivering Ranboo. Tommy watches them, his eyes big and yearning, and George sees the way Phil protects Ranboo, a father figure with his great wings hiding the world away from the tall boy with the heterochromatic (or so he’s told) eyes, and he sees how Tommy wants it, he sees the jealousy, and he sees no anger. It is almost foreign, the look of a broken child on Tommy’s face, and George sees in him the war, and George sees in him the want for a father, for anyone to show him the right way. He sees a boy without a compass, spinning, spinning, spinning, looking for the way home. He almost wishes it was in his nature to sling an arm around the boy, to protect him, even if he burnt down George’s home and shattered the peace, he almost wants to point him in the direction of the exit, the way out of this dark cavern.

Puffy, wiping her blade, which is covered in vegetation from slashing through the deep woods after Sapnap and Dream, on the grass, comes up and smiles at Tommy. He thinks he hears her call him “little duckling” and sees how Tommy doesn’t protest, his jealous eyes fixed on the brother who ruined him, the father he should have had, the sister in rebellion he had lost, and the boy who had stolen his best friend.

“Fuck,” says Quackity, rubbing his chin roughly, itching at his scars in frustration. “Everyone’s shaken up by this, they’re not going to keep searching, are they?”

“Probably not,” agrees George (“Pussies,” complains Quackity), “except Sapnap, he’ll want to search all night. I think the best course of action is to let Dream come to us, he wants attention, wants us looking for him. Irritate him, see if he makes a mistake.”

He pulls a hand over his eyes. “Why did we have to come into power now, George?”

“It’s what you wanted,” he says, too tired to make his voice soft and understanding, “and someone had to be, imagine what could have happened if we were trying to organise this as a headless snake? At least we have some kind of control over this.” He needs some control, doesn’t want to push this over the edge yet. “And we have time, and we have people to listen to. Let’s bring everyone back to Eret’s castle and have a council meeting. Everyone needs to be able to have their bit to say, and Techno will be back this evening after checking his area.”

Quackity nods but he looks drawn. “Alright. Okay.”

“We’re going to box this like a fish, Big Q.”

He gets a smile for that and a fist bump. “Sex Havers for presidency.”

“Sex Havers do have presidency,” he says with a tired grin.

There’s a pause. “George, I’m scared.”

“I know, but I’m right here with you.” He strains for a wobbly, goofy smile. Honestly touched that Quackity has even slightly broken his joking facade. 

“You’re dogwater at comforting,” he complains, “that makes me feel worse.” But it lacks heat, lacks sharpness, and has gained a lazy smile, complete with scars and warm eyes.

-

The council meeting lasts long into the night, the largest map they could find laid out on a massive stone table. George, Karl, and Sapnap sit behind Quackity at the head, listening to everyone’s qualms, ideas, fears, and complaints. Quackity sinks further and further into his chair, and then re-invigorates, sits up straight and speaks logically, quickly, his smart words herding the crowd into their corral, enticing them into the idea of lulling Dream, laying him a trap built from his own pride.

George remembers why Quackity is important, a good piece to have, a good coin to keep heads up.

People are worried, they try not to show it, but they are. The wolf has left its den and all the sheep bleat, their shepherds, their warriors and politicians, try to calm them, try to sweeten them.

They soothe and make promises and set up guard rotations, talk about search parties, and the four hunters’ prowess. Even Techno doesn’t try and disturb the council, perhaps recognising that this is too important for the trivial going-nowhere arguments about how government should be run. (But his eyes still say tyrant from behind his tusks.)

Eret insists that they stay in the castle that night, all of them safe within the thick stone walls. George thinks about the nights he spent here with a crown on his head.

-

They wake up in the morning to see a haze of smoke about a mile away. 

George,  Quackity, Niki, Puffy, and Technoblade set off at a jog through the cool dawn air, Ghostbur gliding along beside them, looking ruffled and anxious. The sky is a pale blue, streaked with smooth stripes of clouds all across the light sky, the moon is only just fading, a single pale sliver beside Fundy’s old ‘secret’ base, the sun a burning white circle rising steadily in a vague semi-circle of deep orange and creamy sepia.

The source of the smoke soon becomes clear. Puffy drops her large blue coat at the edge of the crater next to Techno’s red cape and they both run to the sloping path down into the basin where the peace symbol is burning. Ghostbur turns and speeds back towards the castle to tell everyone else what has happened. The other three follow Puffy and Techno into l’Manberg.

They take buckets of water from Connor’s fishing pond and climb up among the flames to the top where they can drop buckets down over the remaining old stone and burnt wood. He thinks Niki might be crying but none of them say anything, a burning tree seared into their minds.

Bad comes from the castle and kneels where Techno and Puffy dropped their coats, his shoulders heaving. His creation, however flimsy, broken.

“This place is cursed,” says Puffy, and none of them disagree.

-

Everyone drifts back to their homes except for the SHC, who gather back in Karl’s house.

“I fucking hate when villains have _symbolism_ ,” Quackity growls, his forehead pinched with a dark scowl, scars shining in the torch light. “Burning the peace sign… who the fuck does he think he is?”

Karl peers through his bamboo towards l’Manberg. “Sucks, I liked the view.”

“We’ll make you a new one for your wedding gift,” says Sapnap with a yawn, Karl smiles at him swiftly and George feels an aching loneliness.

“George, do you really think that he’ll come to us?” Quackity is also looking out through the bamboo, but his eyes are roving, as if he’ll catch some glimpse of green clothes and a white mask.

“He will.”

“Vouch,” says Sapnap, “he’s vain, he wants our attention.”

“What if he does something… to get our attention,” says Karl, “like assassinate someone, or blow something up.”

“Face it, we weren’t going to find him anyway,” says Sapnap, it looks like it costs him a great deal, his fingers itching on the pommel of his sword like he wants to leap out of his seat and search the woods again.

George sighs. “We don’t know his objective, we don’t know what he wants, and therefore we can’t stop him.” He shrugs. “That’s just the way it is. When we used to hunt him before we always knew where he was headed at least, even if we didn’t know his plan. Now we don’t know his plan, his objective, his location…” Then he stops and swallows, he looks at Sapnap. He can’t believe he didn’t think of it before, in all his meticulous planning, he hadn’t thought of this easy way to keep track of Dream.

“What?” 

“What did we do with the compasses?”

“What?”

“Sapnap! The compasses, from the manhunts, where did we put them?”

The idea dawns on his face. “They must be somewhere in the community house… Bad and Ant might know.”

They jump to their feet.

“What? What’s happening?” Quackity looks wild, but excited, like he knows something good has happened, like their energy is infectious.

“You have compasses that can track Dream,” Karl breathes, a nervous, triumphant grin on his face.

“Don’t get too excited,” says George, “I have no idea where they are, they might be destroyed or broken.”

“It’s something,” says Quackity. “We need everything we can get.”

They search the community house with Bad and Ant, then the court house, and George’s underground base, and the sewers below them. Eventually, in a dusty corner of Sapnap’s old things which are piled in boxes right below a water leak in his rooms, they find them. Still spinning, still pointing towards Dream. There are only three, and there is no way to tell how close to them Dream is, but they can tell he’s moving, an eastern arc around the edge of civilisation. Quackity takes a deep steadying breath, and smiles. They’ve found something that gives them an upper hand.

-

Dream finds him this time, his expression more wild, as though the pollen and bright sun and lush landscape has stimulated his mind too much after the blank prison walls.

“George,” he hisses from the twilight shadows of the forest, “hi.” He smiles, and George smiles back, but it feels like poison.

“Dream, I did what you asked, I thought something else would happen.”

He chuckles, low and echoey behind his mask. “I just wanted to scare them a bit, it’s funny watching them run around after me, but I didn’t want them on the right track. Is Quackity really in charge now?”

“Who else would be?”

“I don’t know, Eret?”

“He’s royalty, not a politician. How have you been?”

“It’s nice to be out. How’s Tommy? Where’s Bad’s Egg?”

“Shaken but trying not to show it,” says George truthfully. “And the Egg is gone, we blew it up.”

He nods, smiling privately (they’ve probably done him some great service by destroying the Egg). “I’ve seen there are guard patrols at night now, but no search parties.”

George blinks, measuring his thoughts carefully. “The council decided they didn’t want to spread their forces too far, didn’t want you attacking isolated groups.”

“So Quackity decided?”

“No. He made the final ruling, but it was all decided by the new council.”

Dream looks frustrated. “Quackity’s a dictator.”

He picks his card and his poker face, naivety and the soft innocence of eternal summer. “No Dream. It’s working, SHC isn’t a dictatorship, anyone can bring forward ideas and problems at a council meeting, even Tommy or Ghostbur or Bad. We don’t have the problem of the Egg any more either… Everything’s working out, Dream. Even Techno is trying to make it work with us, he comes to council meetings and all.”

“George, don’t be an idiot. Quackity is controlling it all really. He makes the final decisions, doesn’t he? He makes the choice about what voices and problems can be heard. He makes the choice about who’s an enemy and who is an ally.”

“Not without talking to SHC first, we won the election after all.”

“A rigged election, George.”

“Quackity wouldn’t do that.” George helped him recount the votes, George helped him redistribute public favour (not that they needed to much, SHC was probably the only good pick). “Karl and Sapnap keep him in check now.”

“Don’t be such a child,” he snarls, “he’s using you, don’t you see? You were able to trick them when you broke me out, but now you can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes. Come on now, play the game better George.” For a moment George thinks he’s been found out, that Dream has finally seen through the false face. “You always see the best in people.”

He lets out a low, relieved breath, concealed as an anxious gasp. Dream does not see what is right in front of him. “It’s not like that. SHC is a good thing, it’s working, why can’t you just see that?” He feels the tremble of anticipation growing in his heart, an orchid in a swamp of guilt, as Dream’s face grows ugly with anger, an unhinged glitter to his eyes.

“Until I am on throne with you beside me, nothing is a good thing, and everything will go down in flames.”

He feels the thrill, a shoot of hunger straight to his stomach.  _Everything the light touches. And all the shadows too._ Dream promises him the light so he can take the dark, but George will have everything in the end. “I will be beside you,” he murmurs.

Dream grabs his hand, gives it a vicious squeeze. George remembers his crazed yell of triumph as l’Manberg blew up the first time, his mask splintered, the sound of it tearing a chasm through the world, straight into George’s soul. “I’ll see you soon.” He disappears into the mist of the night.

-

He turns up trembling to Karl’s house, his skin pale and covered in goosebumps after a long spell in the cold, dank air of Tommy’s mines, gearing himself up to look as wrecked as possible.

“Dream found me last night,” he says as soon as he steps over the threshold, where the other three are eating breakfast.

They all turn immediately, Karl rushing to him, his arms wrapping around him. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine. Just a bit shaken up. Can I have something to eat?”

Karl nods and ushers him to sit down at the table, grabbing some eggs and starting to fry them.

“What did he say?” Sapnap sounds terrified, angry, and vulnerable. “Did he hate us?”

“He just wanted to know why we weren’t looking for him, wanted to know about Quackity and SHC, about the council.”

“What about me?” says Quackity.

“Said you were a dictator, kept going on about how he wanted power again. Thanks,” he says, wolfing down the eggs Karl puts in front of him. “Talked about rigging the election, the council not working out.”

“Did he ask about the compasses?”

“No.”  


“Thank fuck.”

“It was awful, he’s a lunatic. I know it’s because we’re all fucked up but… he really scared me.”

“Did he mention who let him out?” says Sapnap.

“I think he was a bit pissed it wasn’t us, but he didn’t mention it.”

Sapnap swallows and moves his chair with a squeaking noise so he’s right next to George, collapsing his head on George’s shoulder. “Stay here with us, don’t stay out in the forest, please.”

Quackity is still frowning, his expression piously hurt. “I’m only a  _dick_ -tator to my beautiful fiances… what the fuck Dream?”

“You’re so hot,” says Karl.

-

Beneath a dirt proclamation that keeps changing (to the approximation of “I like penis” at the current time, but liable to change as the opinion on penis does), they hold a festival, with good food and drink and singing. George can feel Dream’s palpable jealousy and his rage at their frivolity.

They all carry blades as they feast and laugh, armour is stashed below the table just in case.

George’s most important piece skulks around the campfire where the sheep settle, and it feels like a cold shackle. He wonders if this would have happened just as easily if Dream hadn’t been there as a single enemy for them to hate, and not hate among each other. He wishes they weren’t so fickle, so he could understand if the only thing keeping them together was a united fear, if after Dream’s defeat they would fall apart again and splinter into their own factions with wars.

His plans suddenly seemed fragile, paper thin and transparent. Would it ever work? If he had left Dream in prison could he have trusted Quackity to unite them all anyway?

There is no space left to question, he can’t go back and make any changes. Dream would have got out anyway, at some point, it was impossible to keep him locked away forever, better to let him out on George’s terms, better to maintain his control over Dream, better to know where he was and how he escaped.

Philza drops down on a bench beside him. “You look sad, what’s up?”

“Just wondering if we would be fighting each other on some muddy field right now instead of eating together if Dream hadn’t escaped.”

He peers at him out of the corner of his eye, a curious smile on his face. “We don’t always fight, sometimes there is peace.”

“Once there was eternal peace,” says George, and his smile feels a little broken. 

A wing curves up behind him, not touching, but shadowing his face from the lanterns which glow with multicoloured lights, the translucent coloured paper bunting making the world a stained glass window that George cannot make out. “Eternal peace sounds nice.”

“You think it sounds dull,” says George, he snorts, looking sideways at Phil. “It wasn’t, it was the most beautiful treasure, that in all the stars there was a place where time stopped.”

“The animals still fought.”

“It was not for anger, it was not because of laws and drug trades.” He laughs a little, a little bitterly. “It was for food, and family, and homes.”

“We’re a family,” says Phil, “look around.” They sit at long tables and laugh with enemies. “We’re a family that fights –”

“– each other. A family that kills each other.”  


“Yeah, maybe, but we’re still a family.”

“Well, there’s an estranged cousin I’ve got to look out for,” says George, “they say he’ll kill one of your sons, or maybe he’ll kill a daughter, or a mother, or a brother, a many times removed cousin. Or maybe someone will spill wine, or kiss another’s lover, or whisper a rumour, and perhaps there’ll be a fight. And you’ll tear out each other’s eyes and rip out hearts and blow each other up.” He thinks the courtyard has gone quiet. “But we’re still all a family are we?” His anger is running away with him, a great loping wolf, a shark just below the surface, threatening to break the glassy surface of a dark river. He’s leapt to his feet, his chest pounding hard. “Are we? Maybe you’ll have another war, and tear a whole city out of the ground, and then act all pious and holier than thou when you ask why I wasn’t there to help you rend peace and hope out of the ground, root and stem! You’ll ask me why I wasn’t there to help you wipe out cities, and murder one another, these people you laugh and drink with.

“I just don’t understand,” he shouts, “I don’t understand!

“Why did you ask me that?” He turns to Quackity, who is seated between his two fiances, forkful of pie half way to his mouth. “Why did you ask me where I’d been? Why did you put the blame on me? Did you want me to help you all break and destroy again and again and again and a- _fucking_ -gain?”

Phil’s face is white as a bone, his wings have dropped to his sides. “George?”

“George,” says Sapnap, standing up and taking him by the shoulder. “It’s alright.” He looks into those dark eyes, solid and unchanging. A rock in a storm in a shaft of sunlight. “It’s alright.”

“We’re not a family. We hate each other, and the only thing holding us together is the fact that we’re all little kids, afraid of the dark.”

“I’m not a child,” says Tommy scornfully, “and I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m here to say fuck you to the green bitch boy.”

“I’m here because Big Q asked me too,” says Tubbo, ever diplomatic, “and because I’m tired of fighting wars, because I am a child.”

“I’m here because, gosh I can’t believe… I’m here because I believe in the Language Havers.”

“I’m here because my family is here,” says Skeppy behind Bad, smiling up at him.

“I’m here because I believe in peace,” says Phil, and Ghostbur nods emphatically.

“I’m here for the good food… and the company I guess,” says Techno.

“I’m here for you man,” says Sapnap, “and my fiances.”

“I’m here because you listened to me, and got Quackity to listen,” says Niki, “and because I burnt down a tree and it made me hurt, and I don’t want to burn things any more, I want to build again.”

“I’m here because everything, and everyone is here,” says Ranboo.

George blinks, he feels like he’s floating a hundred miles above. He has a choice, and he doesn’t like it. He can manipulate with the truth or with a lie, and the choice drills through his ribcage.

Quackity stands up. “I’m here because this is a new dawn…” He falters, like he realises this is the kind of thing that might be written in a history book with yellowed pages.

“We’re here because this is home,” says Karl, and George thinks he might finally get that page in the history books he’s been chasing after since his arrival through the rift.

He could say now, he could tell them that he let Dream escape, he could tell them everything. He takes a deep breath, and smiles shakily, a fake. “I’m here because I love.”

-

The festival picks up again, George apologising profusely to Phil before being dragged up to the high table by Sapnap. Most of the occupants of the high table seem to be genuinely high.

“Sorry,” he mumbles to SHC as he slumps down next to Karl.

“Don’t worry about it dude, it always honks me up when I remember there’s a traitor here, someone who helped Dream escape.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“What?” says Karl, munching with confusion on his dinner, eyes still shining with delight at his ticket into the history books.

“We know Dream has powers, he’s been messing with Ranboo… How do we not know he was controlling someone without them realising, or even remembering… Like the Egg did.”

They muse over it while eating slowly. “You could be right,” says Quackity, “no-one’s been acting sus, I haven’t been seeing anyone freer than a costco sample…”

Sapnap snorts, stealing some of Karl’s bread. “Maybe. Seriously though George, are you alright?”

“I’m not that fucked up, you don’t need to call the wambulance,” he says with a small smile, picking at his food. “All this just gets to me, I preferred when it was only a few people falling through the rift… When I didn’t have to worry about war.”

Quackity fidgets slightly. “I’m…”

“I know, you don’t have to say it.”

-

As the festival slows down and people drift to their beds, George finds Philza standing at the edge of the crater as he’s heading back to his dell to sleep. He is bowed over, his wings flaring and squeezing, shaking with broken, silent sobs.

George slips up quietly beside him. Phil jumps, looks at him with bloodshot eyes and then turns away. They stand in silence, Phil’s cries becoming quieter, more heart-wrenching, until he is just weeping silently, his cheeks shining in the moonlight.

“I killed my own son, you know? Not even before he could blow up a city, afterwards. I executed my own fucking son.” His voice is hollow, echoing with memories like a shell that still holds the sound of the sea.

George doesn’t say anything, just stands beside him, looking out over the dark pit of the second explosion, dotted with tiny lights where hope has tried to spring back.

“I killed my own son. And then I helped destroy his dream a second time, I killed his Friend. You were right, we’re just afraid of the dark, we’re not a family, we’re a herd of sheep who fight over grass in the daytime and at night huddle together for safety, not caring about those on the edges who might get torn away by the wolf until it’s _us_ on the edge.”

George doesn’t say anything.

“Won’t you tell me you forgive me? Or you hate me? Won’t you tell me again what a fucked up mess we’re in? That our family is one betrayal after another. We’re all kin slayers and I’m the one who fucking executed my son, stabbed him through the chest while he was unarmed, after he blew up a city and almost killed his brothers. I can still feel his blood on my hands.”

“And your son came back,” George whispers finally, “he glides through the mist between our world and his, and his skin is grey but he’s happy now. You killed your son to save two others,” he says, his memory clouded bitterly with the image of Phil turning away from Tommy, of Phil leaving and forgetting and being a fucking awful father to this fucking travesty of a family, and spins him a tale of fatherly love and compassion, of saving the brother (Wilbur) who broke his little brother into a thousand tiny pieces, the brother who he then denied, who he refused to give a single glance, he lies through his teeth that this ancient thing, who forgets human emotion and wears it like a well painted mask, is a good man and a good father, “you killed your son because he smashed his dream with a fist and it was the only way you knew to keep the pain at bay. You killed your son because he begged you to, and because you didn’t want to leave that decision to anyone else. There is nothing to forgive, Phil, there is nothing to hate. We’re all kin slayers and betrayers and we all hold daggers behind our backs. But you were right, we’re still a family. A fucking awful one… but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

Phil cries a long way into the night, until the dew has settled on their clothes and in their hair. George stays with him, all through the shadows. 

Because they’re just kids, holding hands because they’re afraid of the dark. And because George cannot sleep, his mind is working, ever working, and he is the dark and he is the light of the moon, and soon all the rest of it, of the world, will be his.

_And all the shadows too. Everything the light touches and…_

“And because I’m tired of fighting wars,” said Tubbo, “because I am a child.”

They were all just children, below a sprawling quilt of stars.


	2. LARK'S FINAL MELODY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: i attempted to write a song... i mean obviously i have no idea how to write songs. so go with it, pretend there's a tune and that it makes sense.

**CHAPTER TWO**

Time seems slow as moving through honey, every council meeting ending in someone shouting about something loved and lost, someone threatening war, someone saying that they’ll never find hope and a dream or Dream.

George spends most of his time in the forest, holding his own court where people come to him with small problems, little concerns they’re too scared to take to Quackity’s power lust and splendour. He even finds the time to build himself a little house, built between four trees, its roof many overlapping leaves, and the walls made of mossy rock and repurposed wood. Sometimes people find him just to talk, Phil and Niki are the most common, and it flatters him. Niki talks to him about how she fears Ghostbur’s spirit is slowly slipping away, his conversation less lucid, even the happy memories leaving him, and Phil speaks about his struggles as a father long into the night, about his fears for the future. He thought that maybe his almost breakdown at the festival would have made him a paragon of weakness, not a light in the dark. It makes him smile and it makes him guilty, because he measures his influence by these meetings, measures with sickening coldness how these pieces can be moved in the coming strife.

He wonders, almost every night, watching the stars, if letting Dream go was the right move, if he had been too caught up in his own cleverness, his own elaborate machinations to see the checkmate right in front of his eyes, had moved a piece that wasn’t the right one, had missed a win. He wonders to no avail, there is no sight into the could-have-beens of this world.

The rest of his time he spends with SHC, the ‘feral government’ who united the people, he keeps them on track, points Quackity in the right directions, makes sure it seems like every idea is sprung from Quackity himself.  He has to give them the idyllic world they crave for, has to give them every sweet as honey sip of ambrosia that they can manage, then has to show them how they will never be able to hold it forever.

Sapnap will often sit with him on Eret’s battlements or Karl’s roof below grey clouds or blue skies, just companionship and brotherhood, and it makes George’s heart fill with the eternal summer which was no longer eternal. Sapnap will say “I miss him” and “I fucking hate him” and “I wish he could be at my wedding” and “will you be our best man?” all in the same breath. George will stay right beside him and say “I wish he was here” and “I wish I hated him” and “I hate that I fucking love him” and “of course, of course, ten thousand times, for any wedding you ever have, I want to be by your side”.

Sometimes he almost forgets to play the game, lets the marionette strings hand loose, but then his fingers twitch, like it is what they were born to do, and his little puppets jerk. But still, he forgets, remembers how to smile and love and  _ be _ .

He watches and waits for Dream to strike, he is playing cat and mouse with a rodent that thinks it is a cat, as it prowls and scurries in the background, ever moving so their hidden compasses spin.

He wonders if Dream realises that all his little toys are George’s now.

-

It is a hot, bright day when Puffy arrives in his forest clearing, sweating under her big blue coat, her hair wild with disarray. The sunlight catches in her golden mane and curved sheep horns, she looks breathless, losing her swashbuckling swagger as she leans against the wall of his house to catch her breath.

George stands in his doorway patiently, sensing that the cogs have finally begun to turn after almost a fortnight of nothing.

“Bad thinks Dream has been to the Egg site,” she says, “Karl told me, said to grab you on my way there…” She pants loudly as he darts back into the cool shade of his house to grab his old, dented sword. “Please take your time, I’m fucking shattered.”

They move at a fast jog all the way to the second crater that has cracked the world, George sometimes has nightmares that the earth will split down the middle, a giant ravine from the Egg site to l’Manberg. Some of the main council members have already arrived, Techno (who spends most of his time in their continent rather than his own cottage, choosing to stay, rather hypocritically for a self proclaimed anarchist, in Eret’s castle) is standing at the lip of the crumbled earth, even from here George can tell he looks troubled.

“What is it?” he calls with a dry throat and harsh breathing as he and Puffy slow to a walk.

Quackity’s head pops up over the edge. “George! Puffy! He’s only gone and left us a note, after weeks of  _ nothing _ .”

As George reaches the crater, vertigo makes his vision wavy. 

“‘I’m coming’,” reads out Puffy, squatting down to stare into the crater, where the words have been etched into the mud.

“Well he didn’t need to tell us that,” says George, scowling at the giant letters. “How long would that have taken him?”  


“All night?” Techno shrugs. “Obscure though, he’s trying to scare us.”

“Consider my timbers shivered,” says Puffy, standing back up and pacing the lip of the crater. “But what does it really achieve?”

“Nothing, Dream’s a drama queen,” says Sapnap, appearing beside Quackity. They’ve been trying to do this lately, make jokes of everything possible, it makes it easier. “We’re trying to work out how he got down there.”

“Ender pearls,” says George. “Water.”

“Shit, why didn’t you think of that?” says Quackity, equally to Sapnap and Techno.

“I thought I’d let you have your fun.” Techno smirks, ever Quackity’s rival. “I was more interested in how he _wrote_ it.”

Tommy appears on the back of a donkey, Niki beside him on horseback. Even from here, Tommy’s loud complaints about the heat and the horseflies. “What’s happened?” he shouts, slapping his hand angrily on his arm.

Dropping to his haunches to grab Quackity’s hand and pull him out, George returns his attention to the bottom of the chasm. It’s all smashed rock beneath a carpet of soil that has fallen in from above. The message has been written in the mud in letters at least two metres tall, it’s hard to tell from this height. The ‘G’ at the end half finished, as if he was disturbed while writing it. The ground is a mess all around, sloping down to the ragged edge where they dug deep into the earth and where the TNT exploded above ground before falling into the pit and raining hell on the Egg. The ground feels unsteady, like it might all crumble and slide into the crater which once housed Bad’s trophy room.

Niki and Tommy are beside him now, peering over the edge into the deep hole. “Fuckin’ ‘ell,” says Tommy, “I  did  _ not _ need to hear  _ that _ , Dream.”

“George said the same,” says Sapnap, grabbing George’s hands and scrambling up after Quackity. “I don’t suppose we have any idea what this actually means?”

“Let’s go down and have a better look,” says George, turning to Techno, “you have enderpearls?”

Techno tosses him one. “Me and George will take a look, the rest of you keep lookout. Could be a trap.”

“George… are you sure?” whispers Bad to him, “you said Techno…”

“That’s all been sorted out Bad, don’t worry,” he lies, stepping up to the edge to look for the best place to teleport to.

“I want to go down,” says Tommy, holding out a hand for a pearl.

George and Techno ignore him.

“Maybe Sapnap should go,” says Quackity, “George can be a bit dogwater.”  


“Fuck off,” says George, he tosses his pearl. There is a moment of no movement, the wind blowing in his hair, Tommy complaining, Sapnap saying: “oh, so you’ll risk _my_ life?” and then it is quiet, his friends’ voices a faint whisper high above him, the sudden lack of sunlight makes his vision blue and makes him squint in the deep shadows, the sun only reaching half way down the hole. It is far colder at the bottom of the pit, almost blissfully cool but it makes him shiver.

Technoblade appears beside him, looking slightly dizzy but already looking at the deep furrows of the letters, picking his way over the jumble of smashed rock and clods of earth. “Why here?” he says.

“Implies that he’s just as powerful as the Egg? Implies he has similar powers? It’s something that’s changed while he was in prison…” George brainstorms, carefully following Techno’s path.

“Maybe. How did he do it?”

“Eh, I’m not sure. Probably showing off that he’s got the equipment to brew potions.”

Techno turns his head. “Really?”

“Strength potions probably, picked up a… I don’t know a tree or a rock or something and used it like a pencil.” They jump down onto the rock at the bottom of the ‘O’. “Or maybe he just dug it out, but I feel like that would’ve taken too long.”

He nods, kneeling down to look at the mud. “I can’t see shovel marks, you’re probably right about the strength potion.” It feels odd to have Techno listening to him, not giving him the evils and leaning menacingly on his sword. He stands back up, scanning the bottom of the pit. “What about that?” He points to a pillar, torn out of the ceiling and floor, leaning against the wall on the other side of the pit, the bottom streaked with mud.

“Probably. So he has potions then, probably gapples too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been grinding for armour.”

“He won’t be a match for me.”  


“He hasn’t got anything to lose, that makes him dangerous.”

“Dangerous but not a match for me.”

He is distracted from their surroundings for only a moment, his mouth opening to ask about the unfinished ‘G’. There’s a clanking noise behind them and then pain flares through George’s shoulder. He screams, it echoes above, he sees birds startled by the noise flutter out of a hollow in the side of the crater, black shadows on a blue sky. He hears Sapnap shout his name.

“Pearl,” shouts Techno, grabbing his face to get his attention, holding his shield over them, “it’s just a skeleton, you’ve been shot with an arrow. Pearl up.”

Holding his left arm awkwardly, flaring with a pain so intense but so familiar… He forgot how much it could hurt. He throws his pearl with his right hand and it loops high, high into the air. For a moment everything is the sound of arrows hitting Techno’s shield and darkness, then he is blinded by the sun, nervous voice all around.

“Is he dead?” Tommy yells.

“No,” says Techno, somewhere behind him, “there was a skeleton down there, got him with an arrow. Hey! Don’t pull it out, it could be barbed.”

“Put him on the donkey,” says Sapnap calmly, “we’ll take him back to Callahan and Alyssa, they always sorted us out when we got hurt.”

“That’s my donkey!”

-

The rift is something George wants to understand.

It opens and it closes and it is different for everyone. Sometimes people slip through and back in one single day, or return through the rift multiple times but do not stay. Some people stay and can never leave. Some remember the place they came from before, some have been falling through rifts for years, world to world.

He runs his fingertips along the seams of the world, and ponders them.

There are only a few fundamentals that he understands. They open after chaos, strife, and grief. They open onto new worlds and new times. It is possible to manipulate them, he knows that Karl can.

He feels, every night as he lies awake below a star filled galaxy, for the tear that he can widen. Touches gently on the rift and probes it with the softest touches, afraid to alert it to his curiosity.

The rift is something George is beginning to understand.

-

The donkey jostles him through a haze of pain, which slowly ebbs away and then jolts back as the donkey stumbles on some twisted root or other. Tommy leads the donkey, complaining the whole way about George being a lightweight who should “just walk, pussy”.

The whole group follows him nervously into a chamber of Eret’s castle, Ghostbur, who was lounging in a chair in the belfry, and saw them on the road, had glided off to fetch the medics. Friend watching him leave, and then watching them with a mournful bleat.

Bad is wringing his hands and fretting loudly to a largely quiet group, who all have their eyes on George, or are wiping their foreheads with handkerchiefs, their sweat cooling in the shadows of the castle.

“Cut off his shirt,” says Alyssa immediately upon entering the chamber. Sapnap slides a dagger out of his belt and carefully cuts off his shirt from around the arrow, peeling it away from the bloody skin slowly, making George hiss in pain.

“Holy… George I thought you didn’t get involved in wars,” says Quackity, his eyebrows arched high at the scars littering George’s chest, touching his own unconsciously. 

“We used to be immortal,” he says between clenched teeth, “and we played rough.”

Alyssa moves forwards with a wash cloth. “They were so annoying, I made them promise not to scar each other’s faces up, especially when more people started coming through the rift, I didn’t want people to think this was a battlefield all the time.” He remembers Dream’s livid red scar that runs across his cheek.

George winces, thinking that impression probably hadn’t mattered by the state of the country now.

Callahan taps his arm, grabbing the shaft of the arrow carefully.

“Just do it.”

He does, and George almost faints from the pain. He holds it up for George to see, and he is thankful to note it’s not barbed.

“We’ve probably got a few scars hidden in our hair though,” Sapnap muses, “I’ve seen George’s brain one more time than necessary.”

“And the necessary is fuckin’ zero,” George says, lifting his arm to let Alyssa bandage his shoulder.

Ghostbur drops some Blue into his hand. “One time I made a country with my best friends, have you seen it?”

“I’ve seen it,” says George quietly, accepting the Blue.

“Can you help me find it?” He drifts out into the corridor, Niki and Tommy following him, looking concerned. George wonders if he’s getting worse, he seems less and less lucid every day.

“Don’t get this infected,” says Alyssa, “I don’t want to deal with your complaining.” She hands him the arrow, cleaning it off with a rough cloth. “Here’s your stupid trophy, especially for being an idiot.” He always used to keep mementos of his wounds, it was kind of (very) stupid, but it reminds him of good times in the sun, counting wounds and deaths and not caring, because they were as eternal as the summer. He takes it, and it weighs like memories and feels like love.

Callahan grins at him and George smiles back, he can almost smell the strawberries and flowers of the lake. He stands up with a small groan, pressing his hand onto the wound, and taking a regeneration potion from Alyssa to help speed up the healing process.

“So,” says Techno, where he’s leaning against the wall, “Dream is coming.”

“Whatever that means,” says Quackity, “it could mean he’s planning an attack, it could mean he’s jerking off…”

George rolls his eyes. “Okay, joke over, we need to work out what he’s planning.”

“Techno said about why you think he chose where the Egg was,” says Sapnap, “d’you think that means anything for what he’s planning?”

“He’s annoying enough to choose locations to stick to a theme, or have symbolism, he likes foreshadowing.” George sighs, rubbing shoulder. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s trying to scare us, that the attack might be weeks away but he wants to wear us down,” says Sapnap.

“We keep vigilant anyway,” says Techno, “even if that’s true, because it could be tomorrow.”

-

The forest knows his pain that night, and it sings soft lullabies to him, and sends him her creatures. One he recognises as the fox from the night he set fire to her, and he snuffles around George’s head, fur looking cleaner and thicker than before, no longer matted and flea bitten. 

George remembers when he was the forest.

-

The next day feels even hotter. The forest  _ smells _ green, the scents of the flowers, the moss, and plants is heady, the aromas made a thousand times stronger by the humidity and heat from the faint drizzle that had fizzled out around five in the morning.

George sits on his front door step, a worn wooden plank he had stolen from someone’s old base, sipping more regenerative potion. The sunlight filters through the tree canopy, making them glow like amber, or jade, he supposes, to anyone else. Sweet berries are swiftly ripening amongst the thorns and he thinks it might be time for harvest soon.

Harvest makes him think of the eternal summer and the time before it. It makes his heart ache.

He wonders, briefly, a fleeting cloud over a windswept sky, if there is another way. If he can have Dream by his side with his sweet smile and over-competitive laugh. He recoils from the echoing memory of a crazed laugh. He wonders if he could have left Dream in prison, but he remembers the sly smile and the easy confidence, and knows that no cell could have ever held Dream forever.

He leaves the woods and shambles down to a large field where someone has let all the wheat go to seed. The shadow of his large straw hat isn’t enough to stop him squinting in the sun, to stop the back of his neck itch with tan and burn. He whistles as he works, placing the useless wheat into a wagon to be made into hay for the stables, swinging his hoe until he has a perfect square of brown soil, furrowed and dry. He shakes little seeds up and down the field rows. His back is sore, and it reminds him of hot tunnels and darkness and a cell, but it also reminds him of working a smaller farm in the middle of a lake while Dream talked about nothing and everything. He finds a rusted watering can and carries it to the river, the sun has gone far past its peak by the time he’s finished watering the whole plot.

It was mindless, tiring, and now he sits in the shade of a large apple tree, eating the fruit and sipping slightly lukewarm water. It puts things into perspective as he leans his head back against the rough trunk.

He has things to do. He’s got too caught up in being George, friendly, clever, but not too clever, and the perfect henchman… or goon. He needs to think, he needs to think logically and without involving too much personal opinion.

He needs to focus, to throw his body and soul into the objective and stay objective about it. 

He has to treat it like a field of wheat, rip out the useless, replant, water, and cultivate. He needs to take his time in recreating Eden.

His shoulder hurts, a low throb. It made the work better, it made him remember that loss was something unstoppable, irrefutable. Whatever the cost, everything the light touches (and the shadows too) will be his. Whatever the cost, just as all his work has been (hands calloused, body scarred, wounded heart).

Whatever the cost.

-

“Where were you yesterday?” The throne room is cut into strips of golden light and dusty shadows, he remembers what it looked like from the throne, like a cathedral, like heaven’s steps, from here it looks more like thick bars keeping him out.

“Someone had left the wheat to go to seed,” he says, feeling their scrutiny as he approaches the throne and the high table. There is no-one there except the four of them, the four SHC, there isn’t anyone sitting on the throne, no crowned pig leaning on a sword, no haloed devil squatting in the corner, no man with wings that span the night-sky, no ghost, no children, no pirate captain, no woman who burns trees.

“Did you replant the field?” asks Sapnap.

He stops in a golden shadow. “Yeah. It’s just as hot today.”

“And are you feeling better?”

He smiles a little and starts walking again, Sapnap always knew him best (except for Dream, Dream knew him better, Dream didn’t know him, he was him). “Yeah, I’m fine. Did society collapse while I was away?”

“Tommy went missing for a while,” says Quackity, “but then we found him making a hotel or something.”

“It was a nice hotel,” says Karl.

Quackity scowls. “Whatever. I’m also thinking of employing a bard.”

“I think you’re the bard,” says George, dropping into a chair next to Sapnap, “are we holding council today?”

“Yeah,” says Quackity, “this democracy thing is so tiring.”

Slowly people begin to trickle into the hall, and the conversation begins. Despite his complaints, Quackity quickly becomes animated, his dark eyes shining as he waves his hands emphatically, hardly letting the other three speak. George is content to sit back, and only say things when they need to be said, listening to the flow of conversation, jumping in when Quackity waves to him as the expert, or when Karl stumbles awkwardly over his words.

The conversation moves quickly on to Dream and the message written in the dirt.

George lets the noise wash over him, feels the faint pain of his shoulder, almost already healed by the magic of Callahan’s potions, it would probably already be fixed if he hadn’t worked on the field. He can still feel the burn of it in his muscles, in his skin.

He focusses back in as Techno, standing in a shaft of sunlight that glitters with dust, stops leaning on the pommel of his sword and stands up straight. “Your plan of letting Dream come to us doesn’t appear to be working, oh my  _ liege _ .”

“Would you prefer we waste resources searching the whole SMP for a single guy?” says Sapnap, “Dream would evade us easily.”

“Not if we burn the forest,” says Techno, the conversation of the crowd slowly dying to a low whisper. “Not if we take all the food and hide it in the castle, make him go far away or come to us.”

“You are not burning the forest,” says George, and it feels like the only promise he has ever made.

“If we want to hunt him down, it’s the only way. I want leave this hellhole as soon as possible.”

“You aren’t burning down the forest.”

“It would give us the upper hand,” says Sapnap, “if Dream has to find food further out…”

George sits forwards on his chair. “He will simply blow up the supplies if we keep them in one place.”

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take, we can get food again, simples: fishing,” says Jack.

“Then so can Dream, there’s no benefit.”

“You never want to take the next step when it comes to chasing down Dream, do you?” says Techno, “maybe you were the one who let him out.”

George feels himself shaking as he stands up, he can feel all the animals and the birds and the trees humming and quivering with him. The trees tell him where Dream is hiding, where the guard patrol is, where those who didn’t come to the meeting are relaxing in the sun, they tell him through the dappling of light through a large oak leaf, they tell him through the deer paths, and rabbit warrens, they tell him by the saplings’ father’s father. “I am asking you not to burn my home. I am asking you not to burn the one thing I have been able to keep mostly safe from your fucking wars and buildings. Would you like me to burn your fucking cottage to the ground, Techno? Someone did it to me, let me tell you this: it’s  _ pain _ ful, let me tell you that I am asking not to lose my home for the third time! You blew up the community house, you burnt my cottage, but you will not take away the sacred forests that have been here since even Dream and Sapnap stepped through the rift. This has  _ nothing _ to do with taking the next step to find Dream. It’s a desperate, stupid, _ selfish  _ step which you only want to take so you can run back to your little isolated pigsty. You are not burning the fucking wood.”

A wind comes from a windless sky and rattles the windows, making the dust dance faster, and the candles in the shadows gutter. A shiver runs over the crowd.

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” says Quackity, “we won’t burn the forest. Christ.”

Sapnap’s hand on his forearm pulls him back into his seat. He presses his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth and does not say a word, just burns holes into the side of Techno’s head, where he is once again leaning against the wall.

Once the meeting is over he strides out into the orange sun set and walks swiftly towards the forest. He hasn’t felt it pull this strongly since before all the rifts started opening, he had thought the connection had been dulled forever. He can feel every heartbeat, like he is the land, like he is every tree, every blade of grass. It pounds through him, it should overwhelm him, but finally he feels  _ alive, _ finally he isn’t bored. Ever since he became the moon, the connection had numbed so much he had thought that it had been severed, irreparable.

Now the forest is jubilant. He remembers the faint voice, the feel of the woods the night he burnt it and the Crimson that choked it. He knows it, more than he knows anyone, more than he knows a boy with a birch mask and charcoal lips.

He wanders through the sunset bathed trees for a while, through all the burnt areas where life is slowly returning with young trees and nettles and flowers and moss, until the bats are chirping and an owl hoots, gathering itself for a night of hunting. 

Back at his cottage, Niki is waiting for him, perched on the front step, bathed in the light of the lantern hanging from the porch. She looks up when she hears him crunching through the bracken and smiles at him. “I just wanted to check you were okay,” she whispers, as if afraid of shattering the dark.

“You should be more careful,” he murmurs back, sitting down beside her to take off his boots, “Dream has already come to see me once.”

She ignores him. “I’ve been coming to you with my problems for a few days now,” she says, “I think I forgot that you can have problems too… even after your speech at the festival.”

“I would hardly call it a speech,” he says, loosening his laces.

“It was better than any of the others I heard that night. ‘You’ll tear out people’s eyes and blow each other up’, it’s horrible that that’s true.”

“I spoke to Phil after, and I told him that we _are_ still a family, even if it is fucked up, it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“I know, he told me,” says Niki. “I’m pretty sure he’s written down what you said and is trying to preach it at Church Prime.”

“Really?” He laughs, remembering the gossamer web of lies, glittering with dew drops of fake compassion, concealing the deadly spider’s movements.

“Not really, but I think he really appreciated it. People don’t say it outright, but he gets a lot of shit for the thing with Wilbur. He got a lot of shit from me, and I’m not proud of it because it was bad for me but the _worst_ for Phil.” She sighs, picking at a thread on her shirt. “So how’s things for the wood gremlin?”

“Better when people aren’t trying to burn my home down.”

“Techno just wants to go home, we all do.”

“I know,” he whispers, “I know.”

“Are you happy George?”

“Can anyone here be happy?”

She doesn’t reply, just keeps looking out into the steadying dark.

“My best friend is public enemy number one, but my other best friend is getting married soon, he somehow managed to find two people who are perfect for him, how fucking crazy is that? Two!”

She looks over at him. “You’re jealous, he gets two and you get a broken heart.”

“My heart isn’t broken.”

“You’re in love with –”

“Please don’t. It hurts enough.” The lies and the truth weave together in the air, two moths circling a bright light.

The trees creak as one, like they’re trying to bear the pain for him.

“Are you going to be alright? out here on your own?”

“I’m not alone, Niki. Can’t you feel the trees?”

She looks at him, and even in the half-light he can see her sadness. “Goodnight, George.”

“Night.”

-

He is woken suddenly by a knife to the throat and a hand over his mouth.

“George,” says a deep voice in a low sing-song, the notes dragging out, somehow mellow and menacing at the same time. 

He pushes the hand away. “Dream!” he hisses, “what the hell?”

“George, be quiet.” His voice is sickly sweet, almost childish, dripping with poisoned honey, the serpent beneath the prettiest flowers. “Someone might find us.”

“What do you want?” he grumbles, feigning sleepiness when his body is on high alert, his heart tumbling over itself to escape through his mouth. The blade comes away with a slick silver shine, wicked in the moonlight. George doesn’t have to imagine hard to see his blood dripping from the metal. “Where did you get that from?”

“It’s funny what people leave just… lying around.” He still sounds full of child-like wonder, his eyes big and shining in the moonlight that breaks through his leafy roof, the vowels all curved and gentle, a dagger sheathed in a soft training sleeve. “Did you get my message? I saw you all crawling around there. It was so funny when Bad found those letters, he looked so _scared_. Did you get my message?”

“We got your message.”

“No,” he frowns, looking like a child on the verge of a tantrum, “did _you_ get my message?”

He pauses, afraid to say the wrong thing, his mind already spinning faster than it ever has. Stupidly, his mind cuts instantly to their stupid jokes (“wow, we didn’t need to know  _ that _ Dream”). “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

He sighs, frustrated and low, and rocks back on his haunches. “I know you kept it.”

His mind skids to a halt and he shuffles to sit up slightly, hand on his shoulder, which is now only a muted pain, like a bruise. He feels it tremble through him like a howling, tearing wind. George rolls sideways and grabs the arrow out of the chest at his bed side table. As he turns it in the moonlight, etched letters catch, tiny fissures of darkness that spell out  _ “With Love _ ”. He looks up, meets Dream’s hollow eyes which are now hidden in the dark, sees his crazed little smile of innocence. He forgets sometimes how fucking terrifying Dream can be. 

He swallows. “How did you do that?”

He chuckles softly. “Made it use up its arrows on my shield and dropped it that one. It was pretty easy actually. Are you going to say it back? Say it George.”

“Say what?” he says flatly, still reeling too much to slip on any kind of character. He’s not sure he even knows what character to use. He wishes he had left Dream in prison, because as much as he tries to tell himself that this is on his terms, he is no longer in control.

“Say that you love me.”

He sits in silence in the dark. He once heard that you should be afraid of the dark because there is nothing in it, nothing at all, but whoever said that had never been in a dark room with Dream. “I love you,” he says quietly, and it feels like poison, and it feels like a truth.

“ _Thank_ you,” he says, “I do this all for you.”

George has to remind himself that he does this for everything the light touches, and all the shadows too. Has to promise himself not to respond genuinely, has to promise himself that this hasn’t all been pretence for freeing Dream because Dream is… Dream. He has to promise himself that as he smiles back, and says some sweet nothing, but that it isn’t real. Has to promise to himself that the reply sinking into his heart is “I do all this for you too.”

He doesn’t sleep until the sun comes up. Every shadowed surface seems to have “With Love” carved in harsh, sharp letters. Even his skin seems to burn with the words, like Dream had impressed them into his very bones before he awoke. And when he finally opens his eyes after a disturbed nap, it seems like the very words escape from his lungs with every breath.

With Love.

-

He sits for a long time in the sunlight, staring at the arrow, wondering how he missed the letters before, how Dream could have known that the arrow would hit him not Technoblade. He has the strangest urge to laugh as he imagines Techno with an arrow that reads “With Love” from Dream in his arm.

He raises it to the hot sun, dappled by the leaves. The fletching is the same, white feathers sullied with a trace of dirt. The arrow point is still slightly crusted with his blood, as is the wood, despite Alyssa’s attempt to clean it. It’s the same arrow, no doubt about it. He sits, twirling it between his fingers, thinking. He runs a thumb over the letters. Surely Callahan would have noticed it when pulling it out of his shoulder, it makes no sense.

He remembers the dagger… knife really, small and sharp and… and perfect for carving wood.

He blinks, looks again at the arrow. Surely it had been too dark to carve the arrow last night? He remembers the moonlight through the roof, how bright it had been on the knife edge. He goes to the front door and looks out into the clearing, looks up at the sky, clear from obstruction, where the moon might have coursed through, shining a light on an industrious carpenter with malicious intent.

He grins, feeling some of the fear melting away, 

Still terrifying, still definitely terrifying. He remembers Dream’s placid sweetness. But it isn’t terrifying on the level that Dream had  _ planned _ it. He might have been watching the whole time as George was carried back to the castle (that is terrifying as well) but he didn’t give a skeleton an arrow meant specifically for George.

Struck by sudden insight, George grabs the lantern and looks inside. At the bottom, ready to be burned away, are tiny oak wood shavings.

He smirks. Underestimated again. It almost hurts, how easy it is to deceive someone who should know him so well, who _ he _ knows so well. It almost hurts… but it stings like triumph. Scare tactics don’t work in the light of day.

“With Love,” he mutters under his breath. He doesn’t snap the arrow, in case Dream returns, but chucks it behind him into the darkness of his hut. “With Love, prick.”

-

“He’s popping off, Your Honour!” says Quackity, in a high, tremulous voice as he jumps around the table, Karl reaching the end of his song. 

“Let’s fucking go!” yells Sapnap, choking on the blunt as he does.

George knocks back his head wearily to look at the ceiling. “He’s popping off.”

Karl scurries back to his chair and takes a long gulp of water. “Let’s go!”

“We need a song! For the Sex Havers,” says Quackity, scrambling to sit up properly and banging a fist emphatically on the table.

“Ask Wilbur,” says George, “he made the l’Manberg Anthem.”

“An Anthem… I’ll make it.”

“Quackmeister, you don’t know anything about writing songs.”

“Yes I do!”

“You always do it on the spot.”

“I’ll pop off on the spot and then we can write it down,” he says, grabbing his guitar. “Shall we do it to the same tune as l’Manberg’s?”

“Distasteful,” says George with a small smile, “just a little.”

Quackity starts strumming a different tune, it sounds more like chant, George can hear war drums rolling underneath the beat. It sounds like a sea shanty, and the roll of the waves, and the call of the forest, and the sound of swords clashing, and the sounds of peace, and prosperity. It sounds like the song of a world that has known pain, has known destruction, and is still here. It sounds like peace after war.

He starts to sing, and the words ripple over them. Some of them don’t work, some of them dissolve into laughter and he says “no, no!” and starts strumming from a few lines back and tries again. Karl writes them down diligently on a water stained roll of parchment.

Soon they have lyrics scrawled in Karl’s messy hand and they gather around Quackity’s guitar and fill Karl’s cellar with the sound of music.

“ _There is a place under the sun,”_

It begins.

“ _With forest green and snow topp’d mount,”_

George feels the forest singing with them, settling low in his breast like a hum that fills the air with its love and strength.

“ _Where people dance and sing and shout,_

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’.” _

It rises in his chest, the music and the words welling out of him like a river swollen by heavy rains.

“ _War has torn and killed and crashed,_

_ But the people still sing and shout,” _

It is repetitive, the drone of ocean waves, or rushing wind through the treetops, never letting up, a lilting chant that roars through the room like water through a flood break.

“ _Holes in this earth from bombs and breaks,_

_ Filled up again with flowers twice.” _

Quackity never trips over the strings, the song is pure and unbroken.

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’. _

“ _The blacksmith slams out swords and ploughs,_

_ W’ther cold or sun, gold wheat sway,” _

He feels the dryness of his throat, and still keeps singing, it rises and falls like mountains. He can see the rippling wall of golden wheat below l’Manberg’s old walls.

“ _Own a blade, own a helm,_

_ Heave when the harvest comes, arm in arm.” _

The forest fire flashes into his minds eye, people dragging heavy buckets of water beneath a smoke choked sky.

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’.” _

“ _They sing a song all as one,_

_ As they chop through bough or brother’s arm, _

_ And now we all sing a song as one, _

_ For the war is done.” _

The song ends with that triumphant shout, and George feels it in his soul. “ _ For war is done.” _

-

They make copies of the lyrics and the tune that Quackity had created, and hand them out like flyers, pin them to trees, and leave them to collect after council meetings. George finds himself singing the song to himself as he tends to the wheat field, swinging his hoe to the beat.

“All you need is flag now,” says Niki from behind him. He jumps and turns around. “We’ve come to help out, ‘heave when the harvest comes, arm in arm’.”

He laughs, pushing back his sweaty hair. “Thank you.”

With her, Tubbo, Ghostbur, and Foolish have come, all holding hoes, Niki guiding a donkey to carry some of the wheat back.

“In my world, harvest wasn’t like this,” she says as she begins to weed the ground, “the plants were only ready once a year, here they grow so fast.”

“They used to grow faster,” says George, accepting a drink of water from Tubbo gratefully. “Everything going alright for Snowchester?”

“Fine, fine,” says Tubbo, “Tommy is still being a dick about the discs.”

Niki scowls darkly. “He hasn’t apologised properly.”

“I don’t mind,” says Tubbo quietly.

“I mind.”

“Tommy was just angry,” says Ghostbur, tossing Niki some Blue, “it’s okay.”

They work hard for over an hour, pulling out the wheat and replanting, weeding between the furrows. Foolish is generous with his time and energy, helping George tirelessly as he ploughs a new strip. With the new influx of people who don’t usually live in town, the need for food has grown beyond what they normally need. They load up the donkey with bushels of wheat and lead her up the hill onto the Prime Path.

Ghostbur begins it, his form glowing (George thinks it might be yellow, which he’s pretty sure means the ghost is feeling happy) and his expression nostalgic. 

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’.” _

George laughs and joins in, waving for the other three to start singing as well. The donkey flicks her ears in annoyance as they grow louder, Tubbo jumping in time along the wood planks, pointing at a pair of bees as large as his head in the tall grass.

“ _The blacksmith slams out swords and ploughs,_

_ W’ther cold or sun, gold wheat sway, _

_ Own a blade, own a helm, _

_ Heave when the harvest comes, arm in arm.” _

As they take the breath to continue on with the chorus, the forest warns him, he feels the sudden quietness, the alert twitching of the donkey, a cloud of birds from a nearby thicket. He feels for his dagger. He knows Niki senses it as well. They continue singing, Niki jabbing for Tubbo to move faster.

Out of the trees comes Dream. Tubbo shrieks, the sound echoing down the valley. Niki draws a long, thin rapier, George his dagger. “Keep moving,” he hisses to Foolish, who has the donkey’s reins.

“Oh George,” calls Dream, “ask your friends to stop for me.”

Tubbo is still shaking, George can feel it through his arm. The forest quivers, reaching out for him again, strengthening their connection ever more. He feels the thrum of it deep in his bones.

“Keep moving,” he says again, and Foolish starts walking again. Tubbo with him, trembling steps in time with the donkey. Niki stays with him, both of them backing up with the donkey, eyes on Dream. Ghostbur has disappeared, either out of fear or to tell the others what is happening, George doesn’t know. “What do you want Dream?”

“I just want some of your food, Georgie.” _With Love,_ whispers the wind.

“Get some yourself, there’s a whole field full of it, we couldn’t fit it all on the donkey.” He prides himself on how calm his voice is.

“That’s such hard work, why don’t you just give me some?” His voice is all innocent again, creepily soft, like the delicate touch of a venomous snake.

“It’s not yours,” says George, still holding his little dagger firmly between them.

He takes a prowling step forwards, George fights to remember that he freed Dream, Dream won’t hurt him. “Strange… I thought this was called the Dream SMP… I think this is all mine, every crop, every tree, every person.”

“No. This is no longer the Dream SMP.”

“You have a funny little song,” says Dream, “but no new name, no new flags. You’re a sham.” He moves like a predator in the shadows of the trees by the path, every step poised. “There’s no new l’Manberg,” he says to the others, “Quackity feeds you an anthem like you used to have, and freedom, like you used to crave, but it’s all a fake.” He takes a step forwards.

Niki flashes her rapier warningly. “Don’t take another step.”

“ _It’s a very big and definitely blown up l’Manberg,”_ he sings.

“He’s trying to scare us,” he murmurs to Niki, “he won’t touch us.”

“Hey! Over here!” shouts Foolish, and George hears the approaching sound of hooves cresting the hill.

Dream smirks and melts away into the forest.  George feels only irritation: it is not enough. Chaos needs more fuel.

Sapnap yells, he sounds like tumult: like sadness and anger twisting in a single hurricane. He and Techno ride up to the edge of the trees and Sapnap goes to slide of his horse, crash into the woods, but George runs forwards and puts a hand on his chest, shaking his head. Sapnap stops, drops his head onto George’s shoulder and shouts again, it sounds like a scream.

George just holds him tight. Despite their constant petty fights, Sapnap is his brother, and he feels their emotions mirroring each other like waves crashing at the same time on different beaches. He lets Sapnap cry for both of them, and wishes there was a third with his arms around them both.

-

“What the hell happened?” says Quackity, pacing Karl’s ground floor with a dark scowl. Techno, Niki, and SHC are all gathered in the small room, the two horses nickering outside.

“He came out of the woods,” says Niki.

“He was just trying to scare us,” George jumps in, “nothing to worry about.”

“He said we should give him some of the wheat, because it was technically his. He said because it’s the ‘Dream SMP’ these lands and all the people on it belong to him.”

“So what? He wants us to change the name?” says Karl.

“He’s trying to make things uncertain, unfamiliar.” George leans back against the wall. “He’s expecting us to change the name. I know that it doesn’t seem like much, but a name is important. It’s been the Dream SMP since you all arrived, and there might be new places popping up all over but this place has always been called that to living memory. Small things like that unnerve people, they begin to see change and they’re not sure if they like it.”

“We should still change the name,” announces Quackity into the silence, “this place has had that name for too long, and it gives Dream’s name power.”

“I suppose you’re right.” 

“If we change it, it should be a vote,” says Techno.

“Obviously,” says Quackity, dropping down into a chair at Karl’s kitchen table. “We can make it into a community competition to come up with the name.”

“Bringing people together is good,” says Niki quietly. “But don’t you think we should be focussing on Dream?”

“That’s what he wants,” growls Sapnap.

“He’s dangerous.”  


“Yeah,” says Techno, “but we need to wait, pick the battle ourselves, keep an eye on him. Where is he now?”

Karl takes out the compass he keeps locked in an ender chest. “North of here,” he says, “probably still in that forest where he ambushed you.”

Niki blinks at the compass. “Where did you get that?”

“Not many people know about them, so keep your mouth shut about it,” says Quackity, his head on the table. “But they’re compasses that they used to use in their manhunt days to track Dream’s location. They still work.”

“We don’t want Dream to find out we have them,” says George, “there still might be a traitor who freed him, even if I think it was some kind of mind control with a dash of amnesia.”

“But you can keep track of him?”

“Not how close he is, but the general area he’s in, or where he’s moving,” says Sapnap.

She nods. “Okay, a new festival.”

“That’s bound to piss him off,” says George.

“Boxed like a fish,” says Quackity half-heartedly.

“Cheaper than a costco sample.” Karl smiles fondly, putting away the compass.

The moon turns his bright face to them, as jealousy strikes across his dark crescent.

-

He hears honey dripping in the leaf matter, the distinct buzzing of the bees and the hum of the forest all around. The sun is low in the sky, not quite setting but a low orange glow is beginning to rise up the horizon. A curious deer prances in the bushes beside him as he moves quietly through the trees. He can see bright lights through the thicket, where the burnt up forest is springing up surprisingly fast for anyone except George, who can feel it growing in his ribcage. Haunting music, fluttering flags and bunting, a bonfire dancing.

The festival is starting up, people spilling into the clearing a little way off the Prime Path, gearing itself up for the reveal of the new name. Campaigns had been going up all week until the final three were chosen by the SHC to be voted on by the general public at the festival. George smiles as he sees the three names painted in black on a white canvas in Niki’s hand, leaning against a tree at the edge of the festivities he takes in the chatter and the laughter. There is light enough here to stave back the dark. “Havenland”, “Lark’s Harvest”, and “Swordhome” are the final entries (“Quackton”, “Big Daddy’s County”, “Sex Haver’s Union”, and “King’s Doom” are all memorable names that didn’t make the final cut, despite complaints).

Quackity calls to him from the throng around the bonfire and he moves over to them.

“Gogmeister!” he says, “a happy festival day to you!” He raises his glass.

“Thanks, you too.”

“Get ready for the announcement, I want you up there with me.”

“Where are your fiances?”

“Over there,” he says, pointing to the drinks table, “I’m going up in ten, be there. Don’t fall asleep.”

“Oh ha ha, I’ll see you then.” He rolls his eyes at the giggling Quackity and moves through the crowd, greeting people, thanking them for coming, reminding people that the announcement would be soon.

Standing up on the stage, behind Quackity, with ruddy faces turned up towards them, George feels nervous. He never thought SHC would get this far, but now he stands with the other three on a stage, ready to unveil a new name for the country, ready to strike another blow for peace. They stand there, unafraid, despite the fact Dream could be in the trees with a loaded crossbow. It feels like winning.

“We have seen terrible wars,” Quackity is saying, “we have seen atrocities and monstrosities, some of which still roam the woods today. But we do not surrender. We stand here in peace and in strength, with our swords drawn, but not at each other, in this new dawn. The new dawn that we have brought about as a people.” George remembers Schlatt’s speech _“the Emperor!”_ and he knows that Quackity does not want to emulate that fateful day, he wants unity without dictatorship, despite his lust for power, and George feels admiration stinging the corners of his eyes. “A new dawn symbolised by the lark,” he says, tapping the vote box, “the votes have been counted by our helpful advisor, Foolish, and it is decided. This new age is the age of the lark. Welcome, welcome to Lark’s Harvest!”

Ghostbur (Friend lying at his feet, head resting on the soft leather of his boots), Fundy, and Niki who had come up with the name pump their fists in the air, and there is a resounding cheer. Techno, who has been congratulating them all week on the symbolism of a lark as a new dawn, raises his tankard.

“And our freedom!” shouts Quackity over the crescendo of noise, like a cresting wave, “is as bright and true as a lark’s!”

“To Lark’s Harvest!” shouts Sapnap.

The crowd raises their drinks. “To Lark’s Harvest!”

“With Love,” says George into his mug before taking a long drink.

-

“Honestly, it fits the best with the song,” Fundy says drunkenly, ale running into his thick fur. “The line in the chorus ‘bout…” He burps. “bein’ free as a lark… an’ then the harvest bit…” He drifts off, raises another self congratulatory drink to the stars, the sky dancing with embers blown up from the bonfire. “I am… I give my best… congratulations? c _onsolations_! to the losers… but take this fuckin’ L!”

George laughs. He is nowhere near as drunk as Fundy, selected for guard duty that night just in case the festival is attacked, but the good vibes of the festival almost make him feel drunk. He is listening to the forest, but she does not murmur about Dream anywhere close. He wonders where he is, maybe far away in the wilderness, or poking around someone’s empty house. He thinks it is probably dark, and that every noise scares him, it makes him viciously triumphant and sickeningly yearning, to have Dream  _ here _ beside him.

There is a hush that falls over the festival, the night teaming with life, like all the wild is bursting on a precipice, anticipation filling the stars above. The moon looks down on them, and it mirrors George, half silver half hidden.

Quackity stands up, Ghostbur beside him, both holding guitars. The tune begins low and soft, mellowed guitar strings, the cracking of the bonfire, the hoot of an owl, and someone begins to hum along. 

George remembers the night they destroyed the Egg, the people with their spades beginning the l’Manberg anthem. The lilting, haunting memory of a song, singed with war.  _ “I heard there was a special place” _ now overlapped in his memory with  _ “there is a place, under the sun” _ a new flag of hope, a future horizon rising up at them where they thought there was a dead end, because no-one had to  _ hear _ there was a place, they  _ knew _ , they helped build it, pave every road. It was a symphony finished, mended, with a new tune and new words, but mended. There was still things they had to fix, things to heal, new problems would arise, they needed to put in place new systems of law… But right now, it was a symphony finished, a tale of hope for peace and unity finished, finally (mostly).

He feels the forest growing with the swell of their words, the leaves opening, flower heads closed for the night rising drowsily, he feels her prick of curiosity, her deep love as they sing to her. “ _ With forest green and snow topp’d mount.” _ He thinks he hears her sing back.

She raises the larks early,  **‘they are supposed to sleep until dawn,’** she whispers to him, in the language only they understand,  **‘but they love your song. They are bright and true as humanity.’** His heart almost breaks, because he hasn’t heard her voice in so long, he lost her for Sapnap and Dream so long ago… he almost forgets how to respond. All he can manage is a hum.  **‘Don’t worry,’** she says,  **‘we know. We know you. Lark’s Harvest has my blessing. We love you.’** It makes something inside him shatter and heal all at once.

He hears lark song and raises his head. Even as the song continues, people are raising their heads to the starry sky in wonder, their voices faltering. Tommy, who usually looks sour (especially because his idea of: “Green Bitch Boy’s Grave” had been denied from even being advertised), has his face raised, mouth slack in a child’s innocent awe.

They chatter, a twisting melody that fills the clearing. Swooping through the dark and in and out of the glowing amber pool of firelight.

George stands, and the larks fly to him. He remembers how to recognise the different species, can read them like a book as they settle on his arms and his head and around his feet. They trill long and sweet, almost recognisable as the Lark’s Harvest Anthem. He laughs, bright and true and free as a lark.

‘ **I must settle them to bed,’** they murmur, **‘they have to be awake early.’**

He opens his mouth and he knows the sound that comes out is not his, that it is many and one. “We thank you for your joy. We thank you for song.” It rings around the circle and the larks flutter up as one, disappearing with a last swoop over the flames into the woods.

“George?” asks Sapnap into the silence.

“What the fuck?” yells Tommy, pointing at him, “he’s a witch!”

It would be rather convenient if he could crumple to the floor and faint, but George feels steadier and stronger than he has in a year. “She wanted to say thank you,” he says, his voice trembling, falsified shock and wonder rasping and rounding his words, “the wood, she is… grateful.” He wants to tell the truth about this, it is the one thing that should never be a lie, but here it is, spilling out in a guilty torrent of deception. The acting tastes like acid.

-

The sun was bright when the rift appeared. It was in a fissure, a crack between two rocks. Two things came tumbling out of it. They weren’t sure of the time between the first appearing and the second. 

They watched the two things sit by the lake, noted how they spoke to one another, watched as they nervously began to scratch around in the dirt for food, began cutting down trees to  _ build _ things with. They had never seen anything like it before, to create  _ things _ , tools. Well, some animals did it, but not so complexly, not to get other materials either, these weren’t tools for getting food, but for chopping wood and breaking stone.

They observed silently, trying to understand the intricacies of these creatures. 

There was a soft kind of yearning in their chest, to be and know, to make the noises these creatures did, to understand them and move with them.

They started to sculpt their own, copying the blueprints they had been given to the best of their ability, understanding, as they spoke and fought and built, what these things were. They split themselves into two, one for the body they made and one to stay in the forest.

‘ **Be careful, you’ll fall in love with them,’** said the one to stay, **‘and you’ll never come back.’**

‘ **You are as curious as I,’** said the one for the body, **‘and there will be more. We must integrate in them so we can learn if they mean harm.’**

The first thing he noticed when he entered the body, was how much less colour they could see. (He found out later that the humans could see less colour, but they had severely miscalculated and given the body something called ‘colour-blindness’.) They found out their accent was not perfect, that it was different. 

The other humans paced around them, eyes serious. “What’s your name?” asked one, who wore a torn piece of cloth around his head, the insides of his ‘brain’ deciphered it, but did not know how to reply,

“Can you speak?” asked the other.

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“We do not have… names where… where I come from.”

“Oh. In Sapnap’s world they are stupid, so you got a much better deal,” said the human. “We can give you a name if you’d like.”

“Yes, I would like a name.”

“George is boring enough,” said Sapnap with a scowl.

“Hey!”

“That is fine, I don’t mind George.”

“Hi George, I’m Dream.”

The wood was half right. He did not fall in love with humanity though, he fell in love with a boy who taught him how to smile, with a black charcoal stick and a birch mask, who pointed and said “this is how we show we’re happy” and turned the brightest, widest smile in the world on him. He smiled back, reflexively, like it was the only possible answer.

He fell in love.

With Love.

-

“What the honk?” says Karl, his eyes wide.

The festivities have nervously been waved on, but the dancing is unnatural, people straining to listen to the conversation happening in hissed whispers up on the stage.

“The forest is… alive. She sent us the larks, said she was… grateful. I think she meant for peace.” George stumbles over the lies, his mind full of her light, mischievous chuckle. He forgets sometimes that they are one and the same, that their moon faces grew together, though apart. She has seen, omnisciently, everything that he has. And now they are both two-faced. “It wasn’t… it wasn’t evil. It just… _was_.”

“Good thing we didn’t burn it down,” hisses Quackity, looking over his shoulder anxiously at the trees. “Fuck. I have so many problems to think about without talking forests.”

“It’s not a problem,” says George, “she’s been there the whole time, just didn’t talk before.”

“I’m glad she likes the name we chose,” says Ghostbur, nodding seriously, “very glad. I shall write her a ballad.”

“Great, good,” says Quackity distractedly, “okay, talking woods, no big deal.”

“Are you okay, man?” asks Sapnap. 

“I’m fine,” he says with a small laugh, “it was terrifying, but I’m fine. Let me get back out there, make sure the people know I’m fine, that this is nothing to worry about.”

“What if this is like the Egg again?” asks Karl.

“It’s not. Just trust me, it’s not.”

“We can’t know that, you can’t know if you’re being mind controlled or not,” says Sapnap, his forehead creased with worry.

“Fine, alright. Keep an eye on me, I’ll sleep over at yours tonight and you can see that I’m fine, they just wanted to say thank you.”

“But why?” says Karl, “why did she want to say thanks? Why now? What’s the difference?”

“We’re no longer Dream SMP, we’re Lark’s Harvest, and we have a song that praises the land and peace. They love peace, she loves that _we_ love peace. The world gives us her blessing, for the first time in history. This is it, we’ve started something. This isn’t a hope, this is a certainty now, don’t you see?” He smiles, and it feels truthful. “Now let’s sing and dance, we don’t have much time until this dies down.”

-

A fire starts at the old l’Manberg docks, the wood dry from the hot, windless week, helped along by a splash of oil.

It is meaningless destruction that means the most, George thinks, as he looks at the creative genius of his most important piece’s destruction. It meant nothing to them practically, it was a useless walkway of old wood, stained with fire, smoke, and salt, but it was the last bit left, the final wooden struts clinging desperately to the shore.

There is some poetic mastery of Dream’s work. The third fire: first the forest, then the peace sign, and now the docks. Home, peace, and hope swallowed by hot tongues and dark smoke. The invisible enemy in their ranks starting the painting, Dream finishing it with two vicious strokes. George likes where he’s taken their art piece.

Tommy stands in the dusk as they run to put out the flames, and George watches him. He is fatherless, brother-less, family-less. He remembers when Tommy first arrived and all he felt was annoyance, now all he feels is pity. All he has known of this world is war and fire. And George pities him. He wants to tell the child that soon everything the light touches will be George’s, and he will banish the shadows, and no-one will smile in the dark.

He wants to say that the larks will still fly in the morning.

He says nothing. And watches.

-

“We have to start sending out search parties again,” says Techno, “your plan to let Dream come to us isn’t working.”

“We’re already exhausted by guard rotations,” says Quackity, scowling, “we haven’t got the people or resources to start search parties as well.”

“Then stop with the guards,” he says, “there’s too much land to cover and it isn’t working. Everyone knows that Dream has been sneaking around seeing his boyfriend every night.” A smattering of laughter.

George feels a flush on his cheeks but ignores it. “He’s right,” he whispers to Quackity, “Tommy has been running around spreading shit about that as well, maybe you should let Techno organise the search parties.”

He taps his fingernails fast on the table. “Alright. Techno you’re in charge of search parties, reporting back to Sapnap.”

“Reporting back to Sapnap?”

“He has the experience,” Quackity snaps, “and I trust him.” His scars pinch, George imagines that having a pickaxe smashed into your teeth is debilitating to trust between two people.

“If search parties are starting again, does that mean that we’re hunting to kill?” asks Puffy.

The crowd quivers. George feels their bloodlust, tastes it on the air. He feels a visceral hatred. They are dogs held back by a loosening hand. They are desperate for the release of sword through flesh and blood coating their hands, they have gone too long without war. He wonders if there is any way to cure them. He wonders if it’s just because it’s Dream or if they just want blood.

There is a pause. “If unavoidable,” says Quackity, “but I would rather have him for questioning and public execution.”

It is like George can hear a thousand blades loosening in scabbards when he looks into their intent eyes. He smiles, and lets it reflect in his own irises. Imagines that he too wants Dream dead, but lets it fade with nostalgia and long friendship, his face is a lie, a play, a theatrical performance in which every leap of emotion is read and recorded and analysed. 

“They want him dead,” he says to Sapnap as they leave.

“So do I.”

Karl stops in front of him. “Don’t worry, not all of them are that bloodthirsty. We’ll get him for questioning, weed out whoever he got to help him. It’s going to be fine George.”

He nods and smiles, and regards the pieces. He has to make a move now. He has spent too long deliberating, making small changes to the placement of his pawns but not moving the important pieces. He has spent to long on the board and not above it.

Perspective. Whatever the cost.  _ Everything the light touches… and all the shadows too. _

-

George, of course, finds himself searching the western side of town with Sapnap, Bad, and Ant. The compasses show that Dream is somewhere this side of Lark’s Harvest, but the trees are thick and impenetrable by sight. Even if Dream was nearby, which the forest told him he was not, they would have as much hope of finding him as a chick in a cow farm.

The day gets colder, and a rolling mist fills the trees, rendering any search even more pointless than before. George uses his time to think, he hangs above a chessboard, waiting for the next move, considering where his pieces are, where the safe moves are, where the moves that incite conflict are.

Sapnap pesters him as they crash through fog choked brambles: “can you speak to the forest again?” “does it know where Dream is?” He says no, all the while probing for Dream’s location, says that the forest only spoke to him once.

The search parties feel just as pointless as the guard rotations as they all reconvene at the fog choked castle, Technoblade leaning on his sword listening to every scrap that could be recent campsites of Dream’s. The crowd seems both invigorated and dampened: happy to have been actively searching for Dream but disappointed at not having found him on the first day.

-

Maybe, for just a little while, George imagines that Lark’s Harvest will really work. Maybe, for just one desperate second he hopes that he does not have to open Pandora’s Box for the second time, that he can leash chaos to his side.

Niki has designed a flag, and already the looms are churning them out. A black lark on a blue field, simple but their aim is simple: peace. And just for a second he thinks they’ve done it. That maybe Lark’s Harvest is working, that maybe a flag can fly and an anthem by sung by every voice.

It rains for two days. The kind of torrential rain that tears down hillsides and locks everyone up indoors. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does lightning strikes are common and deadly. 

Perhaps if it hadn’t rained, people wouldn’t have been so easily coerced by Tommy’s shouting and Techno’s grumbles about tyrants and leadership and old enemies. But as it was, the rain had people ducking from house to house under the golden street lamps carrying news of rebellion. 

George finds himself tramping through the mud with Quackity, trying to regain some control of the hysteria and frenzy of the radicalised houses, like firefighters in the rain.

When the storm clouds are finally blown away, and the lark lifts from its damp pole and begins to flutter again in the wind, it is burnt away like some insignificant cloth by a torch bearing mob (a small mob, but a mob all the same) lead by Tommy.

Niki stands and watches the smoke rise from the scrap of cloth. George wonders how many times she has seen this, and how many more times until she snaps.

-

He has a nightmare about bright red spores which turn the sky into an eternal sunset.

He remembers every shade of colour that humans cannot see, all the ones he left behind when he fell into this body and miscalculated their colour sensitivity. He remembers the feel of the world beneath his fingertips. He remembers being the forest and the forest being him.

He remembers that the whole world is a forest, just some clearings are larger and more textured than others.

He has a nightmare that bright red spores –

He has a nightmare – 

Malevolence grabs his mind.

Crimson.

“Nothing ever dies here,” says the Crimson. And he remembers its immensity, the weight of its hatred. “Remember that nothing ever, ever dies here.”

“You’re dead.”

“Am I? I’M COMING.”

“Why not ‘I _am_ coming? why not the final flourish? ‘I’m’ seems so… diminutive,” says the Egg, “almost like there was more to say…”

I’M COMING.

“Well, you didn’t need to tell us that,” says Quackity, his scars are bright, livid, CRIMSON.

“DID YOU GET MY MESSAGE?” printed on the shaft of an arrow. 

“No,” says Dream, frustrated, “did _you_ get my message.”

_ With Love. WITH LOVE. _

The letters are stark in the earth at the bottom of the pit. I’M COMING. The ‘G’ was – was half drawn, broken off at the arrow. Unfinished.

I’M COMING – 

“My _MESSAGE_ ” WITH LOVE

I’M COMING I’M COMING I’M COMING – BACK I’M COMING BACK

“Well you didn’t need to tell us that.”

Red spores. Ghosts. Nothing ever dies here.

Back when we were immortal. When we were immortal.

He feels the lucid mortal pain of awaking.  _ NO. _

“Did you get my message?” WITH LOVE.

“Nothing ever dies here.”

‘ **That thing is dead,’** says the forest. **‘But others awaken.’**

I’M COMING BACK.

“Nothing ever –”

He wakes up. The writing in the dirt was never from Dream. Perhaps he helped write it, perhaps he wrote it for someone, but it was never from him.

-

George sneaks back to the site of the Egg destruction and the cryptic message under the cover of darkness. His mind full of red, a colour he had not seen in so long, still could not see, but in his minds eye the millions of shades he had seen as the forest filled his vision like a foaming crimson sea.

He walks through the half burnt forest, the vegetation has sprung back, seems to explode with life where he walks, ferns unfurling and moss visibly moving, creeping over expanding trunks, even in the dark flowers and leaves unravelling. Nothing ever dies here. The truth pounds in his heart as the flora responds to his passage. Nothing  _ ever _ dies here.

As he walks his mind is a red horizon of red spores on a red wind. And the red fades to  _ his _ red, the dark, flat colour he usually sees, and the only other colour he sees is blue. Blue fleece and then a yellow flicker.

The forest wakes from ashy slumber, where it was growing slowly it pushes up through burnt earth. Nothing ever dies here.

He crosses the dark plain, keeping out of the moonlight soaked hollows and sticking to the shadows of the occasional tree, building, or small hill. 

The hole is still raw, dark earth still not grassed over. It is a gaping chasm, a void of darkness glittering with red eyes and smooth white bone and echoing with far off whispers of groans, clanking, and slurred hisses. There is the faded ghost of the red evil pressing on his mind, a phantom grasp around his soul. But the forest was right, the Egg is gone, at least for the immediate present.

Into the depths he tosses a lit torch, its aura of light not even reaching the walls at it falls, snuffing out just as it illuminates the ground, littered with walking corpses and the still present letters carved into the dirt “I’m coming”. 

He enderpearls to a ledge about halfway down into the pit and lowers a lantern tied to a thick rope into the darkness. It swings in the dark, casting a soft glow over the bottom of the pit. He regards the hard strokes of the other letters that appear in the circle of light, the firm “I” and “N” contrasting the half finished “G”, and George can’t help but think the message wasn’t finished when they found it. The lantern bobs and shakes as he unravels it, and he squints in the darkness to the space beneath the words, imagining four letters viciously hacked into the earth “B” “A” “C” and “K”. He can almost see the slashing finale of the “K” slashed through rubble and fallen clods of dirt.

“Who?” he mumbles to the hissing occupants of the pit, who hide from his glowing circle of light. “Who is coming back?”

The shadows have no answer, they are not yet his.

-

I’M COMING BACK.

I’M COMING BACK.

I’M COMING BACK.

“There’s always a rule of three,” says the memory, “remember. Shield block, sword parry, strike. There’s always a rule of three.”

“Why?” asks the memory’s self. “Why not surprise them with a rule of four?”

“They will already be back on the shield block, you’ll be out of kilter.”

“I don’t think this is how real combat is taught.”

“It’s how _I_ teach,” says the memory, vain and arrogant and sulking, the memory’s self has complained too much.

“Dream,” whines memory’s self, as the memory walks back into a yellow fog, “tell me again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” sulks the memory.

“It does, come back, tell me.”

The memory’s voice appears by his shoulder. “There’s always a rule of three. Nothing is ever a coincidence, but if you want to make sure, see if it’s a rule of three.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just always remember the rule of three, you’ll know what I mean.”

“Things happen more than three times or less than three times all the time,” says the memory’s self, and even detached he feels the frustration.

“But important things are always in threes. Three bad events, three lies, three betrayals, three lovers.” The voice becomes lower, sleepy. “Did you really go to the pit?”

Drowsy, memory’s self frowns. “Yeah, the forest woke up. It grew all around me.”

A memory, a dream, a Dream, laughs. “Wake up, THEY’RE COMING.”

-

He wakes with a jolt, the mangy fox from the forest fire, its pelt now thick and red russet, is sitting by his bed. Brown eyes glowing in the sunbeams coursing through his leafy roof, the fox cocks its head, almost winks, and runs out of the door. It is the third time he has seen the fox.

He peels the sweaty sheets from his skin, the nightmare still winding through his brain like a serpent, brushing everything with the cold tint of horror. Revelation, pit, memory: rule of three.

Three explosions: l’Manberg, l’Manberg, the Egg.

Three fires: the forest, the peace symbol, the docks.

Three lovers: Sapnap, Karl, Quackity.

Three deaths until a strike out (except they’re coming back, and maybe it’s because the number is three, maybe three is the magic number).

Three ghosts: Wilbur, Schlatt, and Mexican Dream.

Three times he has seen the fox. He tears out of the cottage and into the wood, the fox is waiting for him, flicking its tail at the edge of the clearing by a patch of bluebells. It regards him, then bounds away in a dart of reddish-brown sliding into the undergrowth. George follows, his eyes fixed on the creamy white tail tip that bobs in and out of sight betwixt the trees.

His mind is far away, floating up, up in the sky.

The fox stops at the edge of where the forest was once burnt and turns to face him so quickly George almost trips into him.

‘ **It wasn’t all a dream,’** says the forest.

A lark begins a sweet melody.

It still feels like a dream as George kneels on thick grass that should not be. The golden haze of leaves and flowers and plush foliage, that he could once see in a thousand shades of green, bursts before him where stubby, burnt trunks were crooked and soot covered the dark soil. It feels like a sign.

“Did I do this?” he whispers to the fox and to the forest.

‘ **We did this,’** they confirm, and George feels their souls inching ever closer, reaching out to entwine and entangle as they were before the separation.

“Not yet,” he says, “I don’t want to go back yet.”

She laughs.  **‘I know. Not yet.** **But soon.** **’**

-

George only works out it is past noon on  the day of the council meeting (more a council of war with each side present, he can imagine the arguing already taking place) by the time he reaches the Prime Path and squints up at the glaring sun, the lush newness of the forest distracting his attention, the canopy that had sprung into life hiding its position in the deep summer blue of the sky dome. 

He breaks into a jog, the back of his neck burning and his scalp itching with sweat. He still feels bewildered, the nightmarish fever of his waking blurring with the confusion of the heat and the forest that has seen a new spring.

He clatters up the stairs and into the cool atrium of the castle, the courtyard ahead shaded, bees dozing in the long grass. He catches his breath, collects himself, his mind unravelling to form the naive purity of the persona he needs to portray, conceal his shifting motives only for a little while longer, hold in hand quick anger and use it to strike when best, keep intelligence smothered by uncertainty. He slips into character as smooth as water, hiding away the immensity of the ancient forest and the slinking leviathan of manipulation beneath simple, dark brown eyes.

In the main chamber he can hear shouting and confusion. Unity and peace shattered in one fell swoop.

He is George as he walks through the door: friendly, seeking amusement, quick to anger, clever when he wants to be, the right hand of Quackity’s rule. He is George as he skids on the newly cleaned floor and scowls petulantly as they laugh at him. “George is late again, bet he overslept,” somebody says, and the moon twists his sly smile inwards.

“Anyone notice the forest is back?” he asks as he approaches the high table, every step a carefully choreographed movement.

The laughter dies away. 

“What are you on about?” says Quackity.

“Seriously, did none of you notice that the forest that burnt down to ash has bounced back in one night?” He laughs, sitting down on the edge of the table. “I wasn’t sleeping, I was checking the Egg hadn’t returned, and I was looking for a reason the plants came back so quickly last night.” (Half a lie, he had slept a long time.)

“It’s hard to see the burnt bit from the Prime Path,” says Karl defensively.

“And we had bigger problems, sorry _Gogy_ ,” says Tommy.

“Well, it’s all back. The trees are as thick as they were a few weeks ago, the undergrowth is deep and the leaves don’t look young. All the flowers are out, there are bee hives hanging in the boughs and animals in their burrows. It’s alive again, even the smell of burning is gone.” He smiles brightly, lets his eyes sparkle with unending joy.

Fundy hauls himself up onto a window ledge to look out over the woods. “He’s not wrong, Jesus.”

“Has this got anything to do with that voice?” Bad is standing anxiously beneath a window, his horns silhouetted against the golden light. “From the festival?”

“The voice was the forest, so I assume so,” says George.

“It isn’t… it isn’t like the Egg is it?” He glances nervously at Skeppy and Ant.

“It’s not trying to take over my mind, no.” He reels out the line, sees the hook bobbing out in the still water, all of those piranhas swishing low below the surface. “I think we got the message wrong.” First move, the knight cutting across the board, always out of left field, unpredictable.

“What message?” snaps Ponk. The pawn takes a step, sharp jaws snap.

“The one at the bottom of the pit: ‘I’m coming’.” He taps the table, stands back up, paces along the dais in front of SHC. “I think we… misconstrued it. The message wasn’t finished.”

“Tell us what you mean.” Techno stands up straight, whirling his blade up onto his shoulder in a soldier’s salute. “Stop dancing around it.” They’ve taken the bait, teeth dig in harshly.

He ponders the board, his eyes alight on two bishops by the door. He jumps down and walks into the crowd. His favourite, most important piece has set up the hard part, the bit that will push them over the edge into checkmate. “Big Q, come over here,” he says, looking over his shoulder at one of his queen pieces.

Quackity scowls at him. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Come over here,” he whines, dashing a little George-ness into his control of the room, and, reluctantly, Quackity stands up. “I think the message was unfinished, and what it was meant to say was ‘I’m coming _back_ ’. At first I was worried it was a message from the Egg, but then I was thinking…”

“… about who could come back,” finishes Karl, following Quackity.

He stands in front of Friend, staring deep into the glassy black eyes. He takes Quackity’s hand, who has joined him before Ghostbur and his pet, and guides it into the mess of wool between his ears. Quackity sags against him, his hand trembling beneath George’s fingers.

“No,” he mumbles, broken and disbelieving.

“What?” asks Sapnap, irritated and exasperated. The whole throne room is filled with the same tense, infuriated energy, the piranhas swirl in maddened circles around his bobbing bait.

“It has horns,” spits Quackity, shattering the room, taking a few stumbling steps backwards, “it has fucking – it has ram’s horns.”

George can feel them too, the broken edges of horns hidden beneath blue wool. There is a  whistle of understanding around the room.

Three voices hiss: “It was never meant to be.” The slam of two buttons and the rasp of flint on steel.

“Nothing ever dies here,” says George, and his voice fills the hall. “Ghosts, phantoms… monsters reincarnated. We might not be immortal any more, but we are by no means mortal. Nothing ever dies here.”

Friend bleats, and the sound is like a cackle. Ghostbur winds his grey fingers in the blue wool, his face is carefully blank, but the ancient eyes of the forest see through all. Both the eyes of the sheep-goat-man hybrid and the ghostly figure are full of abject madness, so deep and all consuming that George wonders why he didn’t see it before. All four of those black pools mirror the abyss of George’s dream, the crater where the Egg once was. They feel like summer storms and lightning strikes, thunder rolls and crashes in those glassy pupils, the never-ending crush of a volatile sea.

“Nothing ever dies here,” he repeats, squatting down in front of Friend, then looking up at Wilbur (not Ghostbur, he is not fading as Niki feared, but returning), “isn’t that right?” He has moved a pawn forwards a rank, and now the invisible opponent must decide whether to take or not, the pieces George is willing to sacrifice in the exchange are all lined up in position, he has made his move.

“It has ram’s horns,” says Quackity again, falling back into Karl and Sapnap’s arms, his eyes transfixed on Friend. 

At the same time, Tommy half collapses against the wall, his eyes filled with confused, angry tears. “No. No, please no.” As the ghost of the brother that had cruelly toyed with him, like a puppet, reveals his face, pushing through the shroud, the veil between death and life.

Tubbo’s face too has gone slack, looking at the president he had served. The  _ emperor  _ he had been forced into serving.

Dream once told him he was like the moon, and he knew it was because he had two faces, not because he was nocturnal. He was like a shark with a silver underbelly, always rolled over like a playful dog, showing only the vulnerable bright smile, and hiding beneath dark waters serrated teeth and a slicing fin, dead shark eyes watching from under the waves, deliberating the right moment to strike. And in the room, a thousand coins flip, a thousand minute decisions, ideas, thoughts, allegiances, with the flick of a wrist he turns them all.

“How long has Dream been working on this?” asks George to the room at last, his voice quavering, his eyes glittering. The coins turn, shining in the sun, heads, tails, heads, some clatter to the board, rocking the pieces that still have yet to move. 

“Jschlatt gave him a Book of Resurrection,” says Ant, getting to his feet, tail lashing. One coin falls into the still pool of piranhas, there is a faint movement.

“Who helped Dream out of the prison?” Eret asks.

Every coin falls all at once, and a thousand questions fill the room.  _ Who freed Dream? Who set the forest on fire? Where did the Egg come from? Why is Schlatt back? What does this mean?  _ They become accusations so fast George hardly has time to smirk.  _ You blew up l’Manberg! You made Dream put up the obsidian walls! You killed me! You gave me these scars! I killed you! I won that duel! I trusted you! You betrayed me! _

George stands, waiting, watching. His eyes shine with an unshed web of tears and lies. Chaos is come again, and he feels something shift in the ether.

“ _Look, George,” says the memory, before it was twisted and violent and cruel, when it still told promises it meant to keep, “everything the light touches is our kingdom.”_

Niki turns on Tommy. “You never fucking apologised,” she screams, a fire brand in the sea of anger, “for saying Tubbo was  _ nothing _ compared to your stupid, childish  _ discs _ .” She says it even as the two children cower together, Tommy’s anger muted by his brother’s cold return in the corner of the room. “People died for your fucking music discs, you – you  _ child _ .”

Fundy has two long, wickedly curved daggers out, one pointing at Eret, the other at Schlatt. “You both ruined  _ everything _ .”

“ _The king’s time as a ruler rises and falls like the sun.”_

George remembers the crown being snatched from his pale fingers,  _ “just tell me you hate me” _ he said, half mocking, half sly cruelty of a lie, but something genuine striking from his heart. “Where is my promise, Dream?” he had said countless times.

And the sun falls, and the moon rises.

“And we have yet another tyrant,” yells Techno, his cloak whirling out as he turns on everyone each word a more deadly weapon than the unsheathed sword in his hand, “ruled by another tyrant and another. On and on it goes, tyrant after tyrant after tyrant. Each tyrant ruled by a tyrant, someone else pulling the strings! Each one sheds his mask and hands on the crown, but it is the same man under the cloak!”

“ _One day, George, the sun will set, and my time here will rise with you… as the new king.”_

_ George stands with his brother and his lover on a rock, staring down at l’Manberg. And the promise settles deep in his heart, heavy roots worming deep into his heart.  _

The sun had set a long time ago, George reflects, feeling the many strings of his puppets dance and pull, sees every phantom move on the chess board. Dream had always meant for George to be his unassuming puppet, Dream’s time rising with George’s. But it does not ring true. 

“I told you this country would be in _ruins_ with out me,” Schlatt gloats, his victory speech rising like a gale, all too soon and all too late.

All the pieces George is willing to sacrifice fall, one after the other. Quackity is raging, his piece falling to Schlatt, Techno’s collapses, ironically, in the confusion of anarchy, and Phil is faced with the son he murdered. They all fall, one by one, exchange by exchange. The checkmate draws closer, but they just can’t stop, too greedy for emotion and quick to anger. Piece after piece taken and only George has looked ahead, pre-thought his moves. 

“I’m just a kid,” Ranboo cries out, and it echoes plainly on Tommy and Tubbo’s faces.

“You ruined me!” Quackity is clawing at Sapnap’s arms, trying to get past him to where Schlatt is rising from the blue ashes of his woollen coat, a wolf hiding among the sheep. 

Wilbur too is becoming more solid, the grey washing out of him, the plain smile of Ghostbur draining away, the chaos in humanoid form reappearing from the  veil between life and death.

As if called by the chaos and shouting, others are drifting into the hall who had not bothered to come to the council meeting. Confusion at the war of words and the reappearance of Schlatt and Wilbur flickering over all of their faces. Alyssa and Callahan, their mouths open in horror, stand in the shadows of the hall. Slimecicle enters and starts having an argument with Foolish for no apparent reason. And Skeppy takes it as the perfect moment to start having a domestic with Bad.

Everything the light touches, and all the shadows too.

The chaos shadow comes to heel, cleaving through the crowd by George’s hand. And everything the light touches in the forest whispers with him. “And it is not ‘ _ our _ ’ kingdom,” he says under his breath, “it is mine.”

“ _Have you ever noticed,” slurred a high Sapnap many months before, “that after every conflict we have, the rift opens and more people slip through?”_

It all rises, the tsunami that hit many weeks before tearing through the city they had built. The memories of a world they had tried so hard to cling to, the memories of so many wars and battles and friends turned enemies turned friends turned strangers turned lovers turned family. It ripples through them, a stone into a field, ready to be harvested, and the larks shoot up out of the golden plants.

Their unfinished symphony, woven out of a thousand songs and stories, so many bards with so many lutes and so many poets with ink smearing their hands like blood, their many woven melodies, lying forever unfinished, notes dying and tangling, and snapping. 

And George stands in their centre, and the forest sings, and this symphony will never end.

Dream enters, like chaos always draws him in, maybe because he feels in his bones that this is the end of all things. Poison turns on him almost immediately, swords drawn on him and eyes full of sharp hatred. He has eyes only for George, and the joy both dies and resurrects on his face, he has been outplayed, he has underestimated his opponent, but he still delights in the game. 

The room has fallen silent. “Lovely orchestra,” he says, to no-one and one in particular, “you have the best conductor I have ever seen play.”

The room stays silent, Eret, with Fundy’s dagger still at his throat, readjusts his crown, as if it matters any more.

“That is our real enemy,” says Tommy, raising his sword, and showing himself from being Puffy, where she has been defending him. “Forget the flag, forget the forest!”

Dream barks a short laugh. “I thought so too. I think it’s almost done, I think the song ends soon.”

“The last bit is the only part I’ve worked out the melody to,” says George, and the silence stiffens, chills, raises like the hairs on the back of a startled cat. “And then this world becomes mine again… I will miss some of… all of this.”

The silence rolls, like a deep sea current you notice too late dragging you out to sea. The chessboard cracks in half.

“George?” Sapnap’s face has gone as pale as his bandanna, his restraining arms around Quackity’s now limp form falling to his sides. “What the hell –?”

“Sorry Sapnap.” It is a truth. “The rift will be opening soon, and you can all leave my world. It’s time you got back…”

“It’s not yours,” says Tommy, “it’s ours!”

“It’s mine. I’ve been here for millennia. You couldn’t keep the peace even for a few weeks. I have tried to give you a second chance… a thousand chances.”

“George,” says Karl gently, his hands wrapping tightly in both his fiances’, “what the honk are you talking about? I’ve _seen_ millennia, you weren’t there, you came through the rift after Dream and Sap. I’ve seen every iteration of this world, and every moment in time, this world no less belongs to you than it does to anyone else.”

When he finally answers, he looks only at Dream. “I was born in the coldest winter, when the world was first pushed into existence. I was only a sapling, some moss and a tangle of sweet berries. Time passed, it didn’t matter, we don’t see time the same way, I don’t think. Or maybe you understand, Karl, that we didn’t swim with the current, or against it, but across it. Every moment happened all at once and one after the other.” He laughs. “It is hard to explain. 

“But then the winter ended, and all things were made, and time settled into one stream, and we could move down it, as you do now. It was the summer, and we grew, until everything was ours. The whole world is a forest, just some clearings are larger than others.” As he speaks, his voice becomes layered, like a thousand voices speaking as one. He stares only at Dream. 

“Then a rift opened. Things came out of it, and we watched them for a while, adjusted time to how we wanted it so we could observe them and learn from them. We learned how to make a body, how to make it work, how to make myself a vessel like theirs. We miscalculated a little on how few colours you could see,” he says, huffing a laugh. His gaze flickers to Karl, and there is no longer any reason to hide the years, the ancient sentience. “We have always been here Karl, always.”

It is still and placid outside, the larks are singing and the sun is bright. There should be some crescendo of noise, a great storm and pounding winds. Instead a soft breeze carries the smell of brine into the castle.

“We aren’t going through the rift,” snarls Techno, “I haven’t been home in weeks –”

“You haven’t been home in almost a year,” says George, “this place is not your home. It is a painting you have ruined, a song you missed a thousand notes on, a story that you forgot to write.”

“It is my home,” says Tubbo, “my family is here.”

George feels the tug of the rift beginning to open, he concentrates on the knit, makes sure that nothing new is coming through, that it will let everyone fall out.

“You don’t have to go back to your _original_ world,” says George, “we don’t care where you go, as long as you leave my blown up, destroyed world to the grass and vines and the wisteria. Go with Tommy, go with Niki, with Ranboo, all go to the same world, all together. I don’t care, but this is not your playground any more, you don’t get to stay in the fairytale world with monsters and gentle creatures, and battles about… discs.”

“I don’t understand,” says Niki, “This is our home now.”

“Every road leads back here, to Lark’s Harvest, and you will find it again, I promise you. The gates have not shut forever. You will come here again when you are ready, when this world is ready for you again. When you learn that war is not always the answer, and you cannot solve everything with a sword.”

“We wanted to have our wedding here,” says Sapnap. “I wanted you at my wedding.”

“I’ll be there,” he says, and it is the truth, a thousand voices all at once and the whistle of the wind in the leaves.

“I’ve only just got back,” says Wilbur, “ _we_ ’ve only just got back.”

“Just in time for a new journey,” he replies.

Schlatt is the one who takes a step forwards. “Tell me where the fuck the rift is, ‘ _ god’ _ or whatever the fuck your name is.”

It opens with a  hush of wind in the centre of the room. A swirling vortex of absence, there is no light, no doorway to the other side. It is a gateway to the rift, where things shift, time and space haphazard. It beckons, calls them back, those who should have been visitors. 

“You promise? You promise we can get back here?” asks Bad, his hand clenched tight in Skeppy’s. 

“Yes.”

“You’ve lied so much already,” says Techno, his sword still clenched in white knuckled hands. “You made us fight to get the rift to open, you sowed conflict and chaos…”

“Yes. And now I do not lie.” He takes the blade of Techno’s sword, blood running across his palm. “A blood pact. Every road leads back to Lark’s Harvest, you will find your way home again. You can choose where to go from here, who to go with.”

Schlatt takes a step towards the rift opening, looking on the verge of a maniacal laugh, and like he’s afraid someone’s going to throw him back into the spirit world before he can escape. “I don’t remember where I came from,” he says ruminatively.

“Then find somewhere new,” he shouts, the sudden coursing anger breaking the surface, as the shark reveals their jaw of many teeth. There is a sudden cracking sound a root breaks through the flagstones of the castle floor. Ivy starts to grow over the windows, arrow shaped leaves unfurling, blocking out the bright sun. “It’s time to go. You’ve grown up enough.”

They trip through, each demanding answers, or looking as hollow and broken as after a war. Some kneel to kiss the earth before they leave, say goodbye to the home they had almost been able to hold on to.

Soon their number has dwindled to George’s most prized pieces, smashed and broken, and cast aside. 

Alyssa and Callahan both give George a hug. They say goodbye. And George says they can come back whenever they like, for however long.

Techno walks through after a hard glance at George. His blade still smeared with the blood of a god, and it makes George smile, the blood god has his blood, and now he leaves, in all his terrible splendour.

“I have to find someone,” says Ant, stepping forwards to the edge of the rift, “someone special. I don’t remember where they are…”

“Do you have a name?”

“Velvet.” His ears prick towards the rift. “Do you think I’ll find him?”

“You’re a hunter, Ant, and you never give up. You’ll find him, and you can take him back here one day, and show him the world you discovered.”

The cat nods to him, and steps into the rift.

Bad is next, his eyes full of hurt, betrayal, and understanding. “Was this the only way?”

“Would they have listened? Would they ever have stopped?”

“There’s always a better way.” He ushers Skeppy towards the edge of the rift. 

He huffs a smile. “Find a better way, Bad, find a better world.”

Haloed devil follows gemstone boy through the rift, into the dark, with a final look back of glowing white eyes.

The three fiances step forwards, all hands holding tightly onto each other.

“Brother,” says Sapnap, with his matching callouses and matching scars, and matching memories. “Sorry, and thank you, and… I hate you.”

“I hate you too… brother.”

“You betrayed us, you were never who you said you were,” croaks Quackity, his eyes bleary, recognising finally who is rival was in the dance of power.

“I’m sorry.”

“You did kind of pop off though,” says Karl, through tears. “Even if it was honked up.”

George laughs wetly, and realises he is crying. “Shit.”

“You aren’t all heartless,” laughs Sapnap, starting to cry as well, “cold bitch.”

“I’ll be at your wedding… send an invitation through the rift. It netter be the biggest most… feral wedding ever.”

“Feral boys,” says Quackity, his eyes still angry, but meeting George’s, “forever.”

“Forever,” he agrees. 

“You broke my heart, just a little.”

“Sorry, Big Q.”

“Shut the fuck up man,” he says through thick tears and a giggle. “You’re cheaper than a costco sample.”

It is bittersweet. The simmering below the surface tension of betrayal, the spider revealing themselves on the intricate and unseen web, and the unbreakable bond of brothers in arms.

“Are you coming?” asks Sapnap, turning to Dream. 

Dream looks surprised, leaning against a wall that crawls with new ivy. His mask pushed aside, face naked and pure. He blinks. His voice is still creeping, child-like in innocence, but the deepness of his voice shines through, singing of a time before bloodlust and war, and power. “I don’t know.”

“You’re still my brother,” says Sapnap, glancing quickly at his fiances, having a mute conversation with them in silence, “after everything you did, I still love you man.”

He looks bewildered, eyes flicking between the four of them. “You do?”

“You’ve got a long way to go dude, a lot to make up for.”

“I know… I think.”

Sapnap laughs. “You’ll work everything out. Stay here with your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my –”

“George reveals he’s a god and that’s all you can say?” Dream chuckles, and the warmth of a lost summer rushes over them in a briny breeze.

“You’re his plus one to my wedding,” Sapnap hurries on. His expression uncertain. “The whole gang has to be there, us, Callahan and Alyssa… Ponk. All the people who were there first, and all the people we met later.”

Dream’s lip trembles. “Yeah,” he says through a breaking voice, “I’m – I’m coming to your wedding, brother.”

They melt into the rift, Quackity and Karl looking forwards to new journeys, and Sapnap looking back at his two best friends. He waves good bye, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “See you soon,” he mouths, and then he disappears.

The throne room is a ruin, the floor smashed by trees roots, vines and ivy swallowing the walls and windows, tiny plants already growing in the cracks between the flagstones and in the bricks. Mushrooms grow in the shadows of the throne.

“Are you going to let me stay?”

The room fills with sweetest birdsong, a lark trilling at the window. He closes his eyes, listening to the whispering melody of the woods, the twisting howl of a wolf pack in mellow in the warm afternoon.

“You can stay.” He opens one of his eyes to watch Dream slink out of the shadows into the dappled light. “I want you to stay.”

“Do you?” His eyes shine with unshed chaos and uncertain sanity.

“I do.”

Dream stands half in the shadow and half in the light, mottled sunshine through new growth, the lark sings a new dawn. It is there, everything he ever wanted: “everything the light touches and all the shadows too.” He edges slowly forwards, half made of sun and half made of shadow.

“I want to stay too.”

The rift closes in silence, not daring to break their cautious stand off.

“Good,” says George, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

“I love you.”

George scowls, stalks past him out of the front of the castle, down the path towards the community house. “Whatever, Dream.”

“Oh come on,” he whines playfully, jogging to keep up with him. He drops his mask at the side of the road. “Just tell me you love me.”

“No!” George can’t help the smile. It feels selfish, it feels like everything he ever wanted. He looks back and sees Dream, the sinister smile and the true grin.

“Please!”

“No!”

Something shifts across his face like rage, and then it is chased away with a small frown. “Come on, please. Just say it! You said it before… when you were manipulating me for your schemes.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You aren’t sorry at all.”

They break into a run, footsteps loud on the floating wood of the community house, running through it and onto the other side, then into the forest.

“Come back here!” George shouts breathlessly, somehow becoming the hunter where he was the hunted. “Oh my god, you’re so annoying.”

“George,” hums Dream from somewhere in the trees.

There is still a long way to go, George recognises as he stalks Dream through the bushes, they have a lot of things to work out and more things to apologise for. They have truths to tell, reality to face. But for now they can chase each other through a hot afternoon, covered in bramble scrapes and skinning their knees as they shimmy up trees. 

-

There is a castle, bound to the ground by thick roots and looping vines. 

It is as cold and empty as a church. White cabbage butterflies flutter in the mouldy windows and animals nest in every corner.

Somewhere, deep and low and all around, there is a song. The forest sings it often, it is their favourite song. They hum broken symphonies that lilt and sing of a lost hope, but none will ever compare to the song of a won hope. The song of a land won by tyranny to have no tyrants.

It fills every well and every building block and every hollow. Fills up the sky with blossoming love.

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’. _

“ _War has torn and killed and crashed,_

_ But the people still sing and shout, _

_ Holes in this earth from bombs and breaks, _

_ Filled up again with flowers twice.” _

A rift opens there, ready for old feet to take again the well travelled path home. It stays open, rippling and waiting. A darkness full of light.

Eventually they do. Some of them are angry, with more scars than before, demanding apologies and answers. Some of them come to pick the strawberries, that they swear do not taste as good in any other world. They come with tales, great adventures in far off lands, but always:

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’. _

“ _The blacksmith slams out swords and ploughs,_

_ W’ther cold or sun, gold wheat sway, _

_ Own a blade, own a helm, _

_ Heave when the harvest comes, arm in arm. _

“ _There is a place under the sun,_

_ With forest green and snow topp’d mount, _

_ Where people dance and sing and shout, _

_ Their freedom bright and true as larks’.” _

“ _They sing a song all as one,_

_ As they chop through bough or brother’s arm, _

_ And now we all sing a song as one, _

_ For the war is done.” _

And hope has won.

And every road leads home. Every road leads  home,  to Lark’s Harvest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah... i guess... i guess i did that??? i hope you enjoyed!!
> 
> \- liselle :)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. pls leave kudos and comments, i love those. also idk how bad the formatting is... we're rolling with it.
> 
> ty  
> \- liselle


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